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Torc Robotics plans to take long-haul truck drivers off public roads in late 2026 in Texas, according to VP of Commercialization Nick Elder.
The Blacksburg, Virginia-based tech company wants to make sure it can deliver the autonomous product at scale, Elder told Trucking Dive in an interview last month.
The company plans to release its first without a driver lane on public roads for Interstate 35 in Texas between Dallas-Fort Worth and Laredo near the Mexican border, Elder said.
“When we talk about initial deployments, we’ll look at one or two or three lanes and then expand to a larger geographic area,” he said.
The company expects safety protocols, testing and other factors to be ready for a product launch in 2026, “with an incremental market entry in 2027.” the company said last August.
Torc, an independent subsidiary of Daimler Truck, is piloting the technology in the US Southwest with partners such as CR England and Schneider National. The business expects to initially expand to Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, Elder said.
Torc’s technology includes a variety of factors to drive the trucks, including pre-programmed parameters and artificial intelligence, to the company.
The company was founded in 2005 and achieved early success with a third place with one driverless car challenge in 2007 held by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
“That gave us some visibility that we actually gave to work with people who were kind of early adopters,” Elder said.
In 2019, Daimler Truck acquired a majority stake in the business and last year, Torc acquired Montreal-based Algolux, a vision detection software company, is making strides in challenging weather conditions.
Daimler noted the acquisition of Algolux Annual report 2023stating that the technology “will help further expand one of the most important technical capabilities for bringing autonomous trucks to market.”