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Dive Brief:
- An Einride autonomous truck delivers finished products to a GE Appliances warehouse in Selmer, Tennessee, under a three-year contract that started last October.
- The electric truck, which has no cab, is about 20 feet long inside, and on the Selmer ride, a Slip Robotics bot loads and unloads autonomously the load and parks the same in the truck.
- “We’re always looking at how we can do things in a smaller footprint at the same cost or lower cost and get out of 53 footers,” Harry Chase, senior director of central materials with GE Appliances, told Trucking Dive in a video interview. earlier this month.
Dive Insight:
GE Appliances conducted autonomous pilots with Einride in Selmer and Louisville, Kentucky, evaluating performance at the 750-acre Appliance Park.
The company aims to test an autonomous Einride truck again at Appliance Park, its headquarters, where more than 600 trailers move in and out every day.
The autonomous truck can reach 60 mph, but in Selmer, GE Appliances is keeping the vehicle at about 6 mph for now. In a few months, the company plans to increase that to 10 mph, with the potential for higher speeds in the future.
“We’re always looking for those repeat runs that we can go on and maybe use drivers for those long distances where they’re more critical for us,” Chase said.
Sweden-based Einride is also considering expansion. While most of its work in the U.S. is in its electric vehicles, the company aims to quadruple its autonomous volumes in customer settings around the world, Einride North America General Manager Niklas Reinedahl told Trucking Dive.
The vehicles rely on the supervision of a remote operator with a CDL, who can take control of the vehicle remotely when needed. The company envisions one person overseeing 10 vehicles as the technology scales, Reinedahl said.
“We want to be able to deliver what the workplace of the future will look like for the existing workforce,” he said.