The potential to chisel away costs in the low-margin trucking business has propelled the valuations of self-driving trucking startups by more than 400% on average over the past year
On a recent scorching day on the outskirts of Tucson, Ariz., a tractor-trailer equipped with an autonomous-driving system from technology companyHoldings Inc. waited at a busy overpass until the light turned green and a voice came over the intercom in the cab: “intersection clear.”
Days before and hundreds of miles away in Cupertino, Calif., a self-driving PlusAI Corp. big rig undertook an even more ambitious operation, merging onto Interstate 280 and into the crush of Bay Area rush hour, and motored on its own cautiously down the clogged highway. In the past four months, four prominent self-driving trucking companies collectively valued at about $26 billion, including TuSimple and Plus, have rushed to tap public markets, leveraging the robust market for initial public offerings and the popularity of a vehicle known as a special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, in bids to raise large sums of money.
A successful commercial deployment would go a long way to building confidence in self-driving technology, which Silicon Valley has been developing for about 12 years but is still largely limited to small-scale pilot projects with drivers behind the wheel. Assuming the SPAC deals are completed, the four trucking companies will be armed with a combined $4.2 billion to tackle the challenge.
“Speed to market is definitely important,” said Patrick Dillon, chief financial officer at TuSimple, which plans to start mass production of trucks with its self-driving system in 2024 through an agreement with truck manufacturer Navistar International Corp. There is “no benefit, I think, in waiting.”
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