Self-driving vehicle testing in Pittsburgh area shifting gears to focus on trucking industry

Not long ago, cars topped with a futuristic apparatus could regularly be seen cruising along Pittsburgh’s streets, testing technology that allowed the vehicles to get around without a person steering the wheel.

But such car sightings have become rare as the autonomous vehicle sector has refocused from the hype of the 2010s.

Companies and investors are looking at vehicles in more predictable scenarios — think trucks on the interstate rather than in city traffic — to advance self-driving technology.

Just this month, the people behind one startup that focused on passenger vehicles switched gears, launching a new venture in Pittsburgh that would focus on self- driving trucks. The firm, Stack AV, is looking for space in the Strip District.

It joins Pittsburgh-based Aurora Innovation, which raised $820 million in public and private funding in July. It plans a commercial launch of its self-driving trucking technology next year.

“We see this fundraising as continued validation from some of the most sophisticated investors in the world who are recognizing our industry- leading progress and the enormous potential that lies ahead,” Aurora CEO Chris Urmson said in a second-quarter earnings call in August. “Given that the competitive field has been changing dramatically, we are more confident than ever in our leadership position.”

Brian Kennedy, senior vice president of operations and government affairs at the Pittsburgh Technology Council, said the investments show the sector is advancing still.

“It’s moving forward and in a robust way, but it’s moving forward in a more informed way about where markets and regulators are heading,” Kennedy said. “We’ve learned a lot in the last five years about the technology and about regulation and the public’s willingness to accept autonomous vehicles.

“The people who were making bets on where this technology was going have refined their bets,” Kennedy said.

Steve Brown, an auto analyst for the credit rating agency Fitch Ratings, said the early days of AV technology revealed “a lot of hoopla in the market about what could be done, and a lot of different players were looking at different aspects of automated vehicles, different types of deployments and so forth.”

Time has allowed things to shake out a little.

“Not surprisingly, we’ve seen kind of a consolidation in the area,” Brown said.

Brown pointed to the closure of self-driving car company Argo AI last October after Ford Motor Co. and Volkswagen AG ceased funding. The Strip District-based Argo had a research and testing facility at RIDC Westmoreland Innovation Center in East Huntingdon where PennDOT planned to develop a $20 million, 3-mile test track.

The former company was founded by the leaders of Stack AV.

“I think a lot of what’s happened is this recognition that it’s a tremendously expensive technology to try to pursue,” Brown said. “With the trucking side — it’s another way of looking at things.”

AI truckers

Highways have fewer variables than urban roads, where design quirks, pedestrians, bicycles and unpredictable driver behavior — including motorists making the so-called Pittsburgh Left — can throw a wrench in the works.

Highways are more predictable. Big rigs don’t navigate tight urban centers.

“Trucks are going to be spending considerably more time on roads that are better suited for AV technology — basically, they’re going to be on highways that are well marked,” said Adie Tomer, a senior fellow for the Brookings Institute, a nonprofit think tank.

Trucking is a huge industry to tap, generating $940.8 billion in gross freight revenues last year and moving nearly 11.5 billion tons of freight, according to the Washington, D.C.-based American Trucking Associations.

While interest in self-driving passenger vehicles is still active, there has been more investment in the trucking side recently, said Anna-Marie Baisden, head of autos and infrastructure research at BMI Research, a Fitch Solutions company.

“We believe there is a clear business case for autonomous trucks as it can help improve efficiencies in the freight sector by eliminating the need for breaks and addresses the bigger issue of a shortage of truck drivers, which is impacting a number of major markets, including the United States where industry research suggests there is a shortage of around 80,000 drivers,” she added.

When announcing the launch, Stack AV, which is backed by Japanese tech conglomerate SoftBank Group Corp., said targeting the freight industry made sense for efficiency and safety.

“With our proprietary technology and expertise … we are confident we will revolutionize the trucking and freight industries by driving improvements in efficiency and safety and alleviating supply-chain constraints for our customers, helping them reach their goals and advance their missions,” said Bryan Salesky, CEO and founder of Stack AV and a founder of the former Argo AI.

Aurora Innovation has noted one part of the business case is safety.

There are about 500,000 truck crashes a year on U.S. roads, and nearly 6,000 people lost their lives in truck-related crashes in 2021, the company said.

“We believe our technology can meaningfully reduce the risk,” Aurora said.

Tomer said freight holds several advantages over passenger vehicles.

“It’s a grueling job,” Tomer said. “So the concept of automating it is far different than automating passenger travel. We continue to see growth in overall goods movement in the U.S. We’re going to need more ways to move goods around.”

Still, a driver does far more than simply make sure the rig stays on the road. They handle packages and keep them secure.

“They’re effectively a security officer for the payload,” Tomer said.

Kennedy, of the tech council, said the public policy case is a little easier to make for long-haul trucking.

“In major urban areas, the public policy hurdle is significantly higher for AVs than it would be if you’re trying to operate on a highway where the safety of the technology is more proven and more demonstrated,” Kennedy said.

Cars still revving their engines

General Motor’s driverless AV, Cruise, took to public roads in 2021 when it became the first company to complete a fully driverless ride in San Francisco. By February 2023, Cruise vehicles collectively drove 1 million driverless miles, the company said.

Waymo One’s ride-hailing service said in December it would double its service area in Phoenix and is expanding its operations in San Francisco since launching fully autonomous rides to the public late last year. The company, which was Google’s self-driving car project before it went independent in 2016, also has vehicles in Los Angeles County and Austin, Texas.

Meanwhile, PennDOT and the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission created PennSTART, a testing facility for emergency responders, transportation organizations and researchers.

PennSTART will address safety training and research needs in six areas, including automated vehicles. The facility is expected to be operational next year.

The comfort level that communities have with self-driving passenger cars is shaky because the technology undergoes testing and high-profile collisions have occurred.

Cruise recalled 300 robotaxis in April to update software after one rear-ended a municipal bus in San Francisco.

Tomer pointed to recent incidents in San Francisco, where protesters placed traffic cones on automated vehicles to keep them from running.

“That experience is an absolute warning sign to both regulators, city officials and the AV operators,” he said.

Karen Lightman, executive director of the Metro21 Smart Cities Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, called it “tech-lash.”

“People react out of fear of technology,” Lightman said.

Although there are challenges for passenger vehicles, Lightman said, the technology is poised to improve people’s lives.

“People who are disabled or don’t have access to reliable, safe transportation can be cut off from the rest of the world. They can’t work, get groceries, go to worship, can’t see friends and family,” Lightman said. “There’s a whole chunk of our country that’s disconnected because we don’t have public transportation that serves them.”

“I’m hoping that we’ll see public transportation also become more automated and autonomous, and shared mobility will be a critical part of it,” she added. “If we end up having more single-occupancy vehicles that happen to be autonomous, we’re not improving quality of life. And if it’s just for the rich elite, that’s not sustainable, either. We have to make sure there’s equity in this.”

Companies have been working on the technology for years, but it’s still early in the process, Tomer said.

“A fair expectation here,” Tomer said, “is continued volatility in this marketplace, whether that’s continued mergers and acquisitions (or) whether it’s stop-and-start progress on product rollout.”