Einride Launches Global Fleet Of Electric Robo Trucks

Swedish autonomous vehicle manufacturer Einride announced today the launch of the next generation of its driverless electric transport vehicles and said they will be available globally. 

Einride’s announcement comes as businesses increasingly turn to self-driving vehicles to move goods from factories and warehouses to points of sale and customers. A major example is retail giant Walmart which has been using autonomous vans and trucks built by Palo Alto, Calif, startup Gatik to move groceries from distribution points to pickup sites for online grocery customers in the retailer’s home base of Bentonville, Ark. 

Einride calls its line Autonomous Electric Transport (AET) vehicles “pods,” which have no driver/passenger cabins and are remotely controlled by operators back at the office. The new line includes the AET 1, AET 2, AET 3 and AET 4. They are 100% electric heavy transport vehicles the company says can improve shipment efficiency, reduce transportation costs by up to 60% and carbon dioxide emissions by 90%.

“We can already see a strong traction from the market to start using autonomous and electric transport,” said Einride founder Robert Falck in a release. “The benefits are clear and we want to be the player in the market that can help our customers to make the transition to a better future of transport happen.”

Available now for pre-order, the AET 1 and 2 are designed to run in closed fenced facilities, harbors and public roads. The AET 3 and 4 will be available in 2023 and will run at higher speeds an suited to long-distance highways and larger warehouses, the company said. 

Orders require a $10,000 deposit and there’s a fee to subscribe to Einride’s platform based on the operational level. 

Over the past year or so, Einride has made important connections with large companies that started using their pods—namely vegan food giant Oatly and German food store chain Lidl. 

Meanwhile, Gatik has carved its own unique slice of the market with its autonomous box trucks that can transport refrigerated and frozen goods along with smaller vans. The three-year old company received a huge boost when it was chosen by Walmart last year for a pilot program transporting goods from micro distribution centers to stores where customers can pick up their online grocery orders. 

Gatik operates its vehicles 12 hours a day, 7 days a week for Walmart over short routes its CEO and co-founder Gautam Narang calls the “middle mile.” 

“It is the gap between long-haul trucking on one end…and the last mile use case on the other,” said Narang in an interview with Forbes.com. “The way we define the segment is it can be anywhere from single digit miles all the way up to 250 to 300 miles. We do center on urban and semi-urban settings.”

Narang says his company has since expanded to working with what he terms “multiple customers” and saw a 25% spike in orders once the Covid-19 pandemic led more consumers to avoid on-site grocery store visits in favor of contact-free deliveries.

Content to manage a small but lucrative client-base, Narang says typical contracts with their customers are at least two years—each one worth “multi million dollars.” 

The pandemic may have accelerated the immediate demand for reduced human contact in many industries. But indeed, the launch of Einride’s global fleet of driverless commercial electric vehicles and expansion of Gatik’s customer base is perhaps strong evidence long and short-haul deliveries of goods will increasingly arrive quietly, without a driver, or the smoky chug chug of diesel powered semis.