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* More investors betting on autonomous trucks, data shows
* Startups focusing on less complex driving environments
* Truck maker Robotic Research lands new financing deal
By Nick Carey and Paul Lienert
OXFORD, England, Dec 9 (Reuters) - We'd all be whizzing
round in robotaxis by now if Elon Musk had been right.
Instead, fully self-driving cars are struggling to get away
from the starting grid and some investors are betting that
driverless trucks will reach the chequered flag first.
Only a year ago, startups developing robotaxis were pulling
in eight times more funding than firms working on autonomous
trucks, buses and logistics vehicles, but the gap has narrowed
dramatically in 2021.
With fewer regulatory and technological hurdles, trucks
operating on major highways, fixed delivery routes or in
environments far from cyclists and pedestrians such as mines and
ports are now being seen as a faster way to generate returns.
In the year through Dec. 6, total investment activity for
self-driving logistics vehicles leapt fivefold to $6.5 billion
from $1.3 billion in the same period in 2020, according to
startup data platform PitchBook.
Investment activity for robotaxi firms https://reut.rs/3DEIdVU,
meanwhile, fell 22% to $8.4 billion from $10.8 billion over the
same period, the PitchBook data compiled for Reuters shows.
The numbers may even understate the trend as some robotaxi
firms such as Alphabet Inc's Waymo are pumping more
cash into their own autonomous trucking operations as well.
In the latest trucking deal, Robotic Research said on
Thursday it has raised $228 million by tapping outside investors
for the first time to expand its autonomous trucks, buses and
logistics vehicles business.
The new money comes from investors including SoftBank's
Vision Fund 2, Enlightenment Capital and Luminar
Technologies, which makes lidar sensors used in
self-driving cars.
Robotic Research Chief Executive Alberto Lacaze told Reuters
the company was deploying autonomous vehicles at scale where the
business case works for customers "right now".
"They don't have to wait until 2025, unlike robotaxis where
you need to have the cost of all the sensors come down by an
order of magnitude," he said.
OVERPROMISES
As recently as 2019, Tesla's Musk had promised a
million robotaxis "next year for sure", but self-driving cars
that can navigate safely anywhere are still a long way off.
Peter Rawlinson, head of electric vehicle (EV) startup Lucid
Motors, said last month it would be a decade https://reut.rs/3ocMXh4
before fleets of robotaxis hit the roads - even with the most
advanced sensors.
PitchBook's lead mobility analyst Asad Hussain said startups
such as Gatik, which makes autonomous short-haul vans, and Nuro
with its mini delivery robots, could eclipse Waymo and rival
Cruise over the next few years in commercialising at scale.
Still, while long-haul trucks are easier to automate than
robotaxis because major highways are simpler environments than
bustling city roads, self-driving truck company executives are
cautious about how fast they can ramp up.
"We're very cognizant of the overpromises that the industry
has made," said Cheng Lu, chief executive of self-driving truck
technology company TuSimple, which went public in April
with a market value of $8.5 billion.
"The industry understands the complexity of the problem now
and that solving it will take a longer time," he said.
For now, TuSimple has a fleet of about 50 trucks with safety
drivers aboard crisscrossing America's warmer southern states,
but it plans to have a national network covering major U.S.
highways by 2024.
That will involve major investments in mapping highways,
learning how to handle tougher weather and road conditions
further north and in new self-driving trucks being developed by
Navistar, which is part of Volkswagen's Traton.
'A LONG JOURNEY'
But rolling out a truly national network could take years as
self-driving trucks still face a major challenge: human drivers.
An autonomous vehicle will always hit the brakes if it
encounters a "testosterone-laden human male", said Ralf
Klaedtke, chief technology officer at TE Connectivity,
which makes sensors and electronic systems to handle masses of
self-driving data for the auto industry.
"The autonomous vehicle will always be the slowest in mixed
traffic," he said.
Paul Newman, founder of British autonomous vehicle software
startup Oxbotica, says robotaxis remained his "North Star", his
clear long-term goal.
But for now he is focusing on simpler applications, some of
which use a purpose-built, fully-electric self-driving vehicle
from Australian startup Applied EV.
"This is a long journey," he says while showing off test
vehicles at the company's headquarters in Oxford in England.
"It's one of the hardest engineering problems to solve."
Oxbotica is working on vehicles for mines in partnership
with Wenco, part of Hitachi Construction Machinery, and
on many different options with energy company BP, such as
vehicles for remote wind and solar farms.
Morag Watson, BP's senior vice president for digital science
and engineering, said Oxbotica's technology could monitor large
sites, or haul equipment out to humans undertaking repairs. She
said they would be testing many different options in 2022.
"We've barely scratched the surface of what we can do with
industrial autonomy," Watson said.
Oxbotica is also working with British online food delivery
and technology company Ocado which automates supply
chain systems for the likes of U.S. retail chain Kroger.
BP and Ocado have both invested in Oxbotica.
Alex Harvey, Ocado's head of advanced technology, said
Oxbotica's technology could be used "in the warehouse, in the
yard, on the road, or kerb to kitchen".
NO LEFT TURNS!
U.S. autonomous EV maker Outrider has targeted distribution
yards - picking up trailers after truckers drop them off and
lining up new ones to be hauled away - including at a Chicago
yard for paper company Georgia-Pacific.
Outrider has developed a robot arm for the truck to connect
and disconnect trailers. It has raised $118 million so far and
Chief Executive Andrew Smith says it will scale up to thousands
of vehicles over the next five years.
The startup wants to start doing short hops between yards
but operating on public roads adds complexity, Smith said.
"We saw through the early hype of the technology and
recognised distribution yards were the perfect near-term
solution with their repetitive, low-speed operations in confined
environments," he said.
Going out on public roads requires moving carefully, partly
because of regulations, but also because of legal pitfalls in a
litigious market such as the United States.
Ian White, chief executive of digital insurer Koffie Labs,
said a "black swan billion dollar" crash could wipe out any
company that moves too fast and gets it wrong.
"You'd be putting your balance sheet on the line," he said.
That's why Gatik has opted for a careful approach for its
"middle-mile" delivery routes between distribution centres and
retailers, Chief Executive Gautam Narang said.
Gatik's trucks run on short, predictable routes avoiding
left turns across oncoming traffic, schools, hospitals, fire
stations, blind turns - or anything complicated.
"We're not working on every tricky situation the autonomous
vehicle industry is trying to solve," he said. "We're taking
baby steps using routes that are uneventful from a complexity
standpoint."
Gatik works with Walmart Inc and Loblaw Companies
Ltd using autonomous trucks with safety drivers, though
it operates some driverless routes in Arkansas and sees the
global shortage of drivers as an opportunity.
"We decided to focus on a simpler use case where the need
was very acute," Narang said. "We're not building the technology
for technology's sake."
(Reporting by Nick Carey in Oxford and Paul Lienert in Detroit;
Editing by David Clarke)
