Heavy Duty Trucking, March 2020

Nikola announced a joint venture that will see production of its Tre model begin at an Iveco facility in Ulm Germany in early 2021 Nikola Iveco to build Tre electric truck in Germany Nikola Motor Company will produce its forthcoming Tre model in Europe working with Italy based CNH Industrials Iveco and FPT business units to build the electric trucks at an Iveco plant in Ulm Germany starting in early 2021 The exclusive heavy duty truck partnership will have CNH Industrial taking a 250 million stake in Nikola The Nikola Tre a battery electric heavy duty truck is described as the first step towards the company producing a fuel cell electric truck model Nikola noted that the German government recently released its draft National Hydrogen Strategy which aims to expand the role of companies engaged in hydrogen technologies including the equivalent of 22 billion to fund the hydrogen innovation program including the development of the necessary distribution infrastructure The first models to enter production will be battery electric 4x2 and 6x2 articulated trucks with modular and scalable batteries with a capacity of up to 720 kWh and an electric powertrain that delivers up to 480 kW of continuous power output Plus ai Autonomous trucks possible in Lower 48 by year end Autonomous truck developer Plus ai announced a new safety testing program that it says will enable self driving trucks to drive on public roads anywhere in the continental United States by the end of this year According to the company the new safety program will allow testing on closed courses as well as public roads with a safety driver and operations specialist on board to assume manual control if needed The company is exploring new testing facilities and pilot runs that will broaden the complex driving scenarios that its autonomous system is capable of handling We want to build a technology solution that is applicable across different weather terrains and driving scenarios said Shawn Kerrigan COO and co founder Testing our trucks readiness means we need to put them through stringent safety tests on every highway in the country That is why we are committing to expand our testing to all states that allow autonomous vehicle testing by the end of this year Plus ai said it already has conducted testing of its autonomous trucks in 17 states Late last year Plus ais SAE Level 4 autonomous truck completed a coast to coast commercial freight run hauling a refrigerated load for Land OLakes Plus ai wants to be able to test its autonomous trucks in all types of conditions Daimler Trucks Torc Robotics expand autonomous testing Daimler Trucks and Torc Robotics partners in Daimler Trucks Autonomous Technology Group will soon expand testing of automated truck technology to new public routes in the U S the company announced According to Daimler the team completed initial mapping of additional routes in January These public road testing efforts allow the teams to collect data from real world traffic scenarios beyond what can be learned from computer simulations and closed road courses Initial public road testing started in southwest Virginia last year MARCH 2020 HDT 29 WWW TRUCKINGINFO COM PHOTO PLUS AI PHOTO NIKOLA MOTORS where Torc is headquartered The supportive state and local governments combined with the well developed infrastructure and highway systems allow the teams to rigorously test develop and deploy the automated system according to Daimler The Autonomous Technology Group will continue to test the next generation of automated driving software in Virginia and will add the upcoming new routes to the data collecting This extensive testing is part of Daimler Trucks and Torcs comprehensive validation approach to bring safe highly automated trucks to the road