The Traton Group and PlusAI have announced that they are to expand their global partnership to accelerate the development and scaled deployment of on-highway autonomous trucking solutions in the USA and Europe.
Under an expanded agreement, Traton will provide up to US$25m in non-dilutive R&D funding to PlusAI to accelerate the integration of SuperDrive into autonomous trucks across Traton’s brands. As part of PlusAI’s planned public listing, Traton will nominate a representative to the PlusAI board of directors to strengthen alignment ahead of the planned US commercial launch.
“Autonomous trucking is a strategic pillar of Traton’s long-term technology roadmap,” said Niklas Klingenberg, member of the executive board for research and development, Traton. “From day one of our collaboration, PlusAI’s technical capabilities and commercial execution have exceeded our expectations, giving us even greater confidence that we have chosen the right partner. Autonomy represents a meaningful opportunity to deliver higher uptime and greater value for our fleet customers while strengthening the long-term competitiveness of our brands. Our expanded partnership will reflect both this confidence and our shared goal of bringing factory-built on-road autonomous trucks to market at scale.”
This expanded partnership builds on the collaboration first announced in 2024, when PlusAI’s virtual driver system, SuperDrive, was selected as the on-highway autonomous driving platform for Traton brands, including Scania, MAN, and International. Since then, the companies have achieved multiple technical and operational milestones toward delivering Level 4 autonomous trucking capabilities.
“Together with Traton, we’ve moved autonomy from the lab to factory integration and now to real-world operations,” said David Liu, CEO and co-founder of PlusAI. “We have a common Level 4 software stack operating in Europe and the USA, proven integration on truck platforms of Traton’s brands, successful driverless validation, and customer pilots underway. The expanded partnership allows us to build on this momentum and accelerate toward scaled commercial deployment.”
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