• Waymo, the autonomous vehicle arm of Google, has entered into a long-term strategic partnership with C.H. Robinson, a global logistics company, to pilot autonomous trucks in a 240-mile route between Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston, Texas.

• Neither party disclosed additional information on the initial pilot, but Waymo has plans to deploy several pilots for C.H. Robinson’s customers over the coming years.

• The company also emphasized its intentions to shift to a Driver-as-a-Service business model in the future, where trucks retrofitted with Waymo’s autonomous technology will be directly purchased by carriers and fleets while Waymo provides ongoing services for hardware and software. The company believes today’s partnership will pave the way toward this goal, given C.H. Robinson’s access to 200,000 carriers and shippers.

• Google’s self-driving tech arm Waymo focuses on both goods and passenger transportation. “Waymo Via” is dedicated to autonomous cargo transportation, including trucking, and its vehicles are powered by “Waymo Driver,” its autonomous driving technology platform. The company has been testing its self-driving trucks since 2018 in various projects in California, Georgia, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.

<ul><li> Analyst QuickTake: Waymo’s planned business model is envisioned by most autonomous trucking companies, and, in fact, earlier this month, Embark Trucks announced an ownership transfer program, allowing a freight transportation company to operate autonomous trucks directly—a first in the US. So far, Waymo and other autonomous truck developers including TuSimple and Aurora have conducted tests under a model where they own, maintain, and operate the trucks using their own safety drivers. Previously, Waymo has partnered with transport and logistics company J.B. Hunt (June 2021; extended in January 2022) and UPS (November 2021) for various pilots between Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas.</ul>