At the ACT Expo in Las Vegas, Volvo Autonomous Solutions (VAS) unveiled its first production-ready autonomous truck. Enabled by industry-leading technology from Aurora Innovation, the company believes the purpose-built Volvo VNL Autonomous truck will be the key enabler to increasing freight capacity in the U.S.

“We are at the forefront of a new way to transport goods, complementing and enhancing transportation capacity, and thereby enabling trade and societal growth,” said Nils Jaeger, President of Volvo Autonomous Solutions. “This truck is the first of our standardized global autonomous technology platform, which will enable us to introduce additional models in the future, bringing autonomy to all Volvo Group truck brands and other geographies and use cases.”

Improving transportation for society is at the core of the work done by Volvo Autonomous Solutions which was founded in 2020. The introduction of the VNL Autonomous is said to mark a milestone in the implementation of autonomous transport and the societal benefits of autonomy.

The U.S. has seen commercial vehicle driver shortages for decades, and that gap is only expected to increase. The adoption of autonomy aims to aid the transportation sector with additional freight capacity while allowing drivers to focus on routes suited to a better work-life balance.

The platform uses an in-house developed virtual driver for trucks and machines working in confined spaces with partner-developed virtual driving technologies for on-highway applications. Being a Volvo, a safety focus led design and engineering decisions, with redundant steering, braking, communication, computation, power management, energy storage, and vehicle motion management systems.

“Our platform engineering approach prioritizes safety by incorporating high-assurance redundancy systems designed to mitigate potential emergency situations,” said Shahrukh Kazmi, Chief Product Officer at Volvo Autonomous Solutions. “We built the Volvo VNL Autonomous from the ground up, integrating these redundancy systems to ensure that every safety-critical component is intentionally duplicated, thereby significantly enhancing both safety and reliability.”

Volvo and Aurora engineering teams worked closely to integrate the truck and Aurora Driver SAE Level 4 autonomous driving system. The system consists of Al software, dual computers, proprietary Iidar that can detect objects at more than 400 m (1310 ft), high-resolution cameras, imaging radar, and other sensors.

“Powered by the Aurora Driver, the new Volvo VNL Autonomous is the realization of our shared vision,” said Sterling Anderson, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at Aurora. “This truck combines Aurora’s industry-leading self-driving technology with Volvo’s best-in-class truck, designed specifically for autonomy, making it a must-have for any transport provider that wants to strengthen and grow their business.”

The autonomous system has been extensively trained and tested in Aurora’s virtual suite, where it’s driven billions of miles. It also has driven 1.5 million miles on public roads, where it navigates end-to-end trucking routes traversing highways, rural roadways, and surface streets day and night and through good and bad weather.

Last year, the team began testing a late-stage prototype of the Volvo platform with safety-critical redundant systems built directly into the truck, added Anderson.

“The Volvo VNL Autonomous, powered by the Aurora Driver, offers a fully integrated autonomous solution in the hub-to-hub segment,” said Sasko Cuklev, Head of On-Road Solutions at Volvo Autonomous Solutions. “Our approach reduces complexity for our customers while allowing them to experience the benefits of an autonomous solution with peace of mind by ensuring efficiency, safety, and reliability.”

Building an autonomous truck at scale requires extensive manufacturing experience and a proven procurement ecosystem so the VNL Autonomous will be assembled at Volvo Trucks’ flagship New River Valley (NRV) plant in Dublin, VA. As the largest Volvo Trucks plant in the world, NRV’s decades of high-volume production experience combined with stringent automotive quality processes are said to make it capable of producing the truck at industry demand.

At Aurora’s 2024 analyst and investor day in March, Jaeger provided some of the high-level thinking behind Volvo’s autonomous strategy and teased the unveiling of the new Volvo VNL Autonomous.

Volvo Autonomous Solutions is tailoring its approach for each industry vertical or segment to provide customers with autonomous transport solutions and enable new business models. For instance, for an application in a quarry in the north of Norway in what Jaeger describes as a “confined segment,” the vehicle maker built its own virtual driver, removing the safety driver, offering a full-stack solution, and is already generating revenue.

For the more complex, hub-to-hub, on-highway commercial transportation use case, which he says is the single largest opportunity for autonomous technology, the company focusing on safety and combining its autonomy-enabled truck with the Aurora Driver.

“The integration, which is a crucial part, is very important for the safety case,” he said. “That’s where we’re working very close together, and we also have together a very well-defined commercialization strategy.”

Jaeger emphasized that building an autonomy-enabled truck and driver is complex.

“Anyone can do a proof of concept, a demonstration, but to put a truck on the road with redundancy built-in is a completely different ball game,” he said. “Jointly we have the highest credibility, we have clear progress, and together we’re building the strongest ecosystem in the space.”

Volvo is developing its SVAT (standardized vehicle for autonomous transportation) using the CAST (common architecture and shared technology) so the technology can be applied not only at the U.S.-market VNL truck, but it can also be scaled across the European Volvo truck range the other Volvo Group truck brands like Mack and Renault. Ultimately, the approach will allow Volvo and Aurora to scale across geographies, use cases, and drivetrain options.

“Today, we start with the internal combustion engine, tomorrow it will be battery-electric trucks, the day after it will be fuel cell and hydrogen,” said Jaeger.

The strategy also eases Volvo’s efforts to scale across different business models.

“This platform approach brings us the scale and leverage,” concluded Jaeger. “With this we have competitiveness, and this will enable us to establish a strong market relevance. We are excited to start building a new autonomous transport system for the U.S. hub-to-hub industry, but we know that the future holds more for us.”