Kodiak was founded with the belief that a world-class team focused on long-haul trucking could quickly catch up to the burgeoning autonomous trucking industry, and surpass it.
We received our first truck in December 2018 and carried our first commercial load from Dallas-Fort Worth to Houston just eight months later. Now, two years after our first autonomous loop around our parking lot, we are making disengage-free customer deliveries on Texas highways.
The Kodiak Driver completes an entire disengage-free day, with two back-to-back round trips between DFW and Houston, during the day and at night. All 800+ miles shown here at 10x.
Navigating highways is a very different problem from navigating city streets. We’ve purpose-built the Kodiak Driver to operate in the relatively-narrow, yet still complex, set of environmental conditions required for long-haul trucking.
With shifting, narrowing, and closed lanes, speed changes, disappearing shoulders, construction vehicles and workers, traffic cones, and construction-specific signs, construction zones represent some of the toughest challenges for self-driving vehicles.
Slower-moving vehicles, interchanges, vehicles on the shoulder, and even unexpected obstacles are common on highways. When these instances are encountered, our self-driving trucks identify, plan, and execute a path around the obstacle to safely continue towards their destination.
Long-haul delivery routes are rarely on a single highway. Our trucks merge on and off highways and can handle the hard to predict merges of other drivers.
Rush hour. Holiday traffic. Construction backups. Heavy traffic is a normal, yet challenging highway occurrence. Our trucks can handle these hard to anticipate moments and optimizing their braking and acceleration to maximizing fuel efficiency.
Without service time restrictions our trucks will be able to run 24/7. We’re currently operating at night to test our system’s ability to see and perform in near-complete darkness.
Freight doesn’t care about the weather. Our trucks don’t either, delivering goods rain or shine.