Plus, together with the Traton Group brands Scania, MAN, and International have completed the first phase of their autonomous trucking collaboration through which they intend to launch and roll out driverless trucks globally.
The culmination of this first phase was marked by the release of the Beta 5.0 version SuperDrive, Plus’s L4, AI-based autonomous driving software. Plus highlighted that SuperDrive is now operational in Traton’s autonomous trucks in Europe and the U.S., following a months-long period of public testing across both regions.
Throughout the testing period, teams in Sweden, Germany, and the U.S. worked closely to ensure the seamless deployment of Plus’s autonomous driving software. This collaborative effort saw the teams establish a well-defined process for software release and testing, which now features a structured cadence: offline testing, closed-course evaluations, and extensive public road testing in both Europe and the U.S.
SuperDrive was developed with global deployment as a key end goal, making this level of coordination between the European and American teams across multiple brands and locations a necessity for Plus. Their approach to this collaboration included the implementation of a regular, thorough, testing regimen to ensure reliability and performance; the development of a system to track key feature metrics and assess overall system readiness for autonomous operations; alignment on a global product roadmap, while architecting software designed to accommodate differences in sensor placement and low-level actuation for different vehicle designs; and ultimately ensuring that all features preformed effectively on both the EU and U.S. platform variants.
Deployment of the common autonomous driving software was enabled by Plus’s generative AI technology combined with months of public road testing and validation. The company says that its autonomous trucks can now operate under different weather conditions, while SuperDrive can similarly adjust to behavioral differences of road users and diverse driving conditions in the U.S. and Europe.
Looking ahead, Plus and Traton will jointly map out hub-to-hub routes for phased commercial deployment in Texas. Seen by Plus as a strategic transportation hub in the U.S., and itself home to several major trucking routes, the company will use the state as part of its joint autonomous hub-to-hub transport operations with International in the USA. In the future, both companies plan to expand the route further along to other American states and eventually cover the full region.
