Support CleanTechnica's work througha Substack subscription,on Patreon, oron Stripe. Help us produce all of thehigh-quality, original content we publish week after weekdespite the challenges of content-scraping AI, antisocial media, inflation, and other hurdles.Just yesterday, I wrote about Einride and DAF Trucks partnering on a new, serious autonomous trucking initiative. There’s another recent autonomous trucking story that slipped through the cracks. Autonomous driving company Pony.AI is reportedly looking to deploy 1,000 autonomous heavy-duty electric trucks in the next two to three years.
In particular, the company is trying to roll out 500 to 1,000 fourth-generation autonomous trucks. And it’s not a narrow minded focus. The company aims to deploy these trucks for long-haul freight, bulk commodity transportation, and port logistics.
This is a serious deployment target for electric trucks, not to mention autonomous electric trucks, but it’s actually small potatoes compared to the company’s light-duty autonomous truck goals. Pony.AI (or Pony AI) plans to get 100,000 autonomous light-duty trucks onto the road by 2030.
Naturally, a lot has to happen for this to come about. It’s not just one technological advance but several. “The targets rest on several developments maturing at the same time: a more capable autonomous driving system, lower hardware costs, automotive-grade redundant vehicle platforms, and deeper cooperation with vehicle manufacturers and logistics operators,” CnEVPost writes.
“Pony AI entered the autonomous trucking business in 2018, when its early vehicles were largely hand-built prototypes. Subsequent generations moved progressively closer to automotive-grade production through partnerships with truck manufacturers.
“Cost was the key factor in deciding when to scale. Autonomous driving hardware costs for the Gen-4 heavy truck are about 70% lower than the previous generation, and the vehicle is designed for a service life of 20,000 operating hours or up to 1 million kilometers.”
In other words, the time needs to be right, the technology needs to be ripe. And maybe it now is….
“We had been waiting for the right moment,” said He Xing, vice president of Pony AI and head of the company’s robotruck business, earlier this month. “Our truck technology had already reached a high level, but the cost of building an L4 robotruck remained high.”
By the end of 2025, Pony AI had 200 trucks on the road. A jump from 200 to 1,000 in the next few years is a big one, but it can basically be expected at this point. And from 1,000 to how many more?
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