“It’s not super far away.”
Charlie Jatt
Head of Commercialization for Trucking
Waymo
.…on the future of making 220-mile beer runs with no human in the truck, via Bloomberg News.
Waymo, the self-driving truck unit from Google parent Alphabet Inc., has hauled over 1 million pounds of Modelo and Corona beer from Dallas to Houston in autonomously driven trucks, reports David Welch of Bloomberg News.
The pilot program for Constellation Brands Inc. began in April. Waymo Via and C.H. Robinson Worldwide are freighting the brewskies in Class 8 trucks using Waymo’s autonomous software, with a safety driver at the wheel monitoring things.
But the cold ones may be hitting the road in the future with no human on board at all.
“It’s not super far away,” Jatt told Bloomberg News. “It’s something we’re working toward with urgency and expect to be ready in the coming years.”
Jatt told Bloomberg his company has seen “really good maturity and performance from the system” during the 220-mile beer hauls: “There were no harsh brakes or swerving events.”
That’s good to know. If there was ever such a thing as precious cargo, this is it.
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