Shift Magazine - December 2021 - 13

are the world's first remote truck drivers.
These employees may be responsible for
monitoring as many as 10 trucks at a time
operating in autonomous mode.
Einride has raised $152.3 million, including
$110 million in a series B round in May.
EMBARK TRUCKS
Embark, in mid-November, became the
latest self-driving truck company to go
public via a SPAC, netting approximately
$614 million in the deal, which valued the
company at $5.2 billion.
The
San
Francisco-based
company
claims to be the longest running self-driving
truck program in the U.S., founded at a
time when much of the autonomous-tech
industry remained focused on robotaxi
applications.
At age 26, CEO and co-founder Alex
Rodrigues ranks among the youngest
CEOs of a publicly traded company in U.S.
history.
Key partners include trucking carriers
Werner Enterprises and Bison Transport.
The company is also working with shippers
AB InBev and HP Inc. Embark is
eyeing commercial deployment and delivery
in 2024 and says it has 14,200 nonbinding
reservations for its self-driving
trucks.
Those trucks will come with longrange
lidar provided by Luminar. After
three years working together, Embark and
Luminar announced a formal partnership
in November.
Gatik
GATIK
Gatik has pioneered service
of the so-called " middle mile, "
plying repeatable routes on
surface streets that link distribution
centers and retail
outlets.
In August,
the company
reached an industry milestone,
becoming what's believed to
be the first self-driving truck
company to remove human
safety drivers from behind the
wheel in ongoing, regular commercial service.
The company has slid its safety drivers
over to the passenger seat during operations
on a 7.1-mile route in Bentonville,
Ark., that connects a Walmart dark store
- a mini-warehouse for fulfilling orders -
with a local outlet. Two driverless trucks
are assigned to the route on a daily basis.
Gatik hauls goods for Walmart in
Louisiana using electric box trucks with
a battery-electric powertrain supplied by
Via Motors. Gatik also hauls groceries for
Canadian grocery chain Loblaw.
In October, Gatik closed an $85 million
funding round, led by Ryder Ventures, the
venture capital arm of the trucking logistics
company. It was the venture fund's
first investment in an autonomous trucking
company. Ryder and Gatik are collaborating
on building out an autonomous
delivery network across the U.S. and
Canada. They'll focus on the Dallas-Fort
Kodiak Robotics
Worth area initially.
KODIAK ROBOTICS
Kodiak added to its coffers in November,
raising $125 million in its series B fundraising
round. The company said the fresh
funds would allow it to hire 85 employees,
doubling its head count, and add at least
15 trucks to its fleet.
Notably, the company intends to
forming a coast-to-coast network
start
for its autonomous-driving capabilities.
Currently, the company delivers freight
for paying customers between Dallas-Fort
Worth and Houston. Kodiak conducted the
round trip between Dallas and Houston on
Interstate 45 without disengagements in
four consecutive trips, achieving 829 consecutive
miles under autonomous-only
control.
" The
supply
chain
challenges we
have seen over the last 18 months only
Continued on page 14
december 2021 * shift 13
Shift Magazine - December 2021

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