Daimler has announced that it is strengthening its push toward automated trucks and buses with a new Automated Truck Research & Development Center in Portland, Oregon in the U.S.
Daimler says the new innovation facility is already working in close cooperation with existing development functions for automated driving in Stuttgart and India.
“Automated driving offers enormous advantages in the logistics business, with the potential to mitigate the shortage of truck drivers around the world,” said Martin Daum, the Daimler AG board member responsible for Daimler Trucks & Buses,.
Daum was sopeaking at last weeks Daimler Trucks Capital Market and Technology Day in Portland.
“From a technological point of view, there is still a long way to go until trucks can drive fully autonomously. Automated vehicles must be as safe as possible. We are putting all our effort into this at Daimler Trucks,” he said.
“Our new research and development centre is an important milestone on this road. We are strengthening our efforts in this area to leverage synergies in the development of these key technologies across the globe,” he added.
Daimler says the new research and development centre develops and fine tunes systems for automated driving at Daimler Trucks and Buses according to a comprehensive technology strategy and adds that he centre’s experts are dedicated to all aspects of developing, testing and validating automated vehicles.
In addition the statement says the engineers in Portland work in close cooperation with their colleagues in the research and development centres at Daimler Trucks locations in Stuttgart and in Bangalore in India, forming a global network.
Daimler says that through these close interconnections within the Daimler Group and the exchange of experience and expertise gained from previous research projects, the company will benefit from valuable synergies with other vehicle divisions in future as well, especially from the organisation’s passenger car unit.
Daimler Trucks is investing a total of more than $AUD3.8 billion (€2.5 billion euros) in research and development in 2018 and 2019. More than $AUD 738 million of this will go toward e-mobility, connectivity and automated commercial vehicle technology. This also includes investment in the new research and development centre for automated driving in Portland.