Traton Group partners with Plus to advance autonomous driving tech

Executives from Traton and Plus with International LT Series from Navistar fitted with Plus system (Photo: Traton Group)

Traton Group, which includes such truck brands as Scania, MAN and Navistar, is to work with autonomous driving systems company Plus to advance development of Level 4 self-driving technology.

The focus of this program will be on hub-to-hub routes, with the autonomous tech helping to increase operational efficiency, while cutting emissions and improving road safety.

There is also some hope that development of self-driving tech will help to address the growing shortage of qualified drivers.

Called ‘SuperDrive’, the tech is being developed with the intention of making it brand-agnostic, where all truck brands of the Traton Group will be able to install and offer the feature when ready for market.

“We are committed to developing fully-integrated autonomous solutions. This means technology that is fitted and supported directly from the factory and a solution that is designed to be operated by our customers in their existing infrastructure and operational flows,” said Peter Hafmar, vice-president and head of Autonomous Solutions.

Scania has already been testing trucks fitted with Level 4 autonomous systems from Plus on roads in Sweden since 2021. The plan is to expand this testing to roads across various European countries in 2024.

“Plus is delighted to be selected by Scania as their long-term autonomy technology partner. We will leverage our experience deploying our highly-modular and flexible autonomous driving software globally to help accelerate their development of high performance autonomous trucks that will safely and easily integrate into customer operations and be deployed commercially at scale,” said Shawn Kerrigan, COO and co-founder of Plus.

With headquarters in Silicon Valley, California, autonomous systems developed by Plus are already being used in commercial vehicles around the world. Current partners include (but are not limited to) Bosch, DSV, Iveco and Nikola.