Skip to main content

Do you trust this self-driving Freightliner next to your car? It’s on roads now

Daimler-owned Freightliner has become the first heavy-duty truck manufacturer to obtain the right to test autonomous vehicles in the state of Nevada. Called Inspiration, the company’s first experimental self-driving truck was introduced recently at a special event held on the Hoover Dam.

Freightliner is quick to offer reassurance that the idea of an autonomous big rig is not as terrifying as it might initially seem. The company’s Highway Pilot self-driving technology uses a series of cameras, short- and long-range radars, and sensors to scope out the road ahead and detect potential obstacles. The recorded information is transferred to a central ECU that uses it to control the truck’s gas, brakes, and power steering at highway speeds. Isn’t that reassuring?

The Inspiration also inaugurates Freightliner’s platooning technology. When Highway Pilot is turned on, two or more properly equipped trucks can use vehicle-to-vehicle communication technology to automatically reduce the gap between them to about 25 feet and lock into platoon formation. By optimizing air flow, a three-truck platoon uses 5.3 percent less diesel than when the trucks are traveling by themselves, while a five-truck platoon saves up to six percent.

The Inspiration is no ordinary big rig. More aerodynamic than any model Freightliner has ever built, it uses cameras instead of mirrors to reduce both drag and blind spots, a technology that improves overall efficiency by about 1.5 percent. Considering that trucks often return less than 10 mpg, even a small increase in gas mileage is monumentally important.

The interior is fitted with a fully-configurable digital instrument cluster worthy of a high-end German car. The floor is lined with wood, while the cockpit is equipped with two leather-upholstered air-sprung captain’s chairs and a sofa-like bench that doubles as a bed.

Freightliner stresses that the Inspiration truck isn’t designed to replace highly-trained CDL drivers. At least one person has to remain in the cab at all times, and shipping companies can’t simply load up a truck and program it to reach its destination without a driver. Additionally, Highway Pilot only works at freeway speeds, it can’t maneuver the truck out of a tight spot — at least not yet.

Ronan Glon
Ronan Glon is an American automotive and tech journalist based in southern France. As a long-time contributor to Digital…
We now know what the self-driving Apple Car might look like
A render that shows what the Apple Car might look like.

Thanks to several 3D concept renders, we now know what the future self-driving Apple Car might look like.

Vanarama, a British car-leasing company, took inspiration from other Apple products, as well as Apple patents, in order to accurately picture the rumored Apple car.

Read more
Tesla pulls latest Full Self-Driving beta less than a day after release
The view from a Tesla vehicle.

False collision warnings and other issues have prompted Tesla to pull the latest version of its Full Self-Driving (FSD) beta less than a day after rolling it out for some vehicle owners.

Tesla decided to temporarily roll back to version 10.2 of FSD on Sunday following reports from some drivers of false collision warnings, sudden braking without any apparent reason, and the disappearance of the Autosteer option, among other issues.

Read more
Waymo’s self-driving cars can’t get enough of one dead-end street
waymo

Waymo has been testing its self-driving cars in San Francisco for the last decade. But an apparent change to the vehicles’ routing has caused many of them to make a beeline for a dead-end street in a quiet part of the city, causing residents there to wonder what on earth is going on.

At CBS news crew recently visited the site -- 15th Avenue north of Lake Street in Richmond -- to see if it could work out why so many of Waymo’s autonomous cars are showing up, turning around, and then driving right out again.

Read more