Einride’s drone truck has its first full-time job moving GE appliances around
Swedish autonomous trucking company Einride uses its cabless electric delivery vehicles in Selmer, Tennessee, to move items from the GE Appliances manufacturing plant to a warehouse. This operation can provide up to seven shuttles per day, from Monday to Thursday, the press release states. In an email to The edgean Einride public relations representative, Matthew Klein, wrote that the distance for each ride is 0.3 miles (or 0.48 km) and takes place entirely on private roads owned by GE.
Einride first conducted controlled operations at the GE Appliance Park headquarters in 2021. Later, the company moved to a public road test with approval from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in 2022, the “first pilot project on public roads in the United States for a purpose-built autonomous electric vehicle. truck without driver on board.
In a statement, Harry Chase, senior director of central materials for GE Appliances, says the truck increases safety by reducing traffic and eliminates some tasks since workers don’t need to hitch and unhook trailers. These trucks are part of a larger project “aimed at creating an automated logistics flow,” with AI cameras that automatically trigger dock doors as well as a Slip robot that autonomously loads and unloads the vehicle.
Since Einride’s truck does not use a human driver, its technology is considered Level 4 autonomous. In 2017, the company revealed its first T-Pod design this maximized interior space since there was no need for seats or a steering wheel. Einride then showed himself a more powerful prototype called the T-Log in 2018, which led to design 2020dubbed Autonomous Electric Transportation (AET).
