Category: Featured - Page 2

Daimler Truck’s Autonomous-Ready Fifth Generation Freightliner Cascadia Hits Texas Roads With Torc

by Torc | Apr 16, 2025 | Featured, News

Torc's fifth generation Freightliner Cascadia with Daimler Truck

This news is released jointly with Daimler Truck. The original can be found at www.daimlertruck.com.

Daimler Truck delivers latest iteration of autonomous-ready truck platform based on the new Fifth Generation Freightliner Cascadia with redundant safety features to Torc
Torc, a subsidiary of Daimler Truck, enters productization phase to prepare for commercial release.
In addition to existing routes in New Mexico, Texas and Arizona, the trucks will also be tested in autonomous mode on a new lane in Texas between Laredo and Dallas.
Joanna Buttler, Head of Autonomous Technology Group at Daimler Truck, stated: “Delivering the latest iteration of our autonomous-ready vehicle platform, including production-intent autonomy hardware to Torc marks a significant milestone for Daimler Truck towards series maturity and scaling.”
Peter Vaughan Schmidt, CEO of Torc, said: “Our strong collaboration with Daimler Truck represents six years of success in advancing the future of freight. Fully integrating Torc’s autonomous driver with Daimler Truck’s Freightliner Cascadia platform creates an industry-first, scalable, physical-AI autonomous trucking solution. This will unlock tremendous value for our customers by addressing key industry pain points and presents a clear opportunity to generate revenue and drive meaningful transformation across the industry.”

Stuttgart, Germany / Portland, USA – Daimler Truck North America has started delivering its latest flagship on-highway trucks to the autonomous testing fleet of Torc Robotics, a subsidiary of Daimler Truck. These trucks are based on the recently unveiled Fifth Generation Freightliner Cascadia, which was introduced last year. The autonomous-ready version of the new Freightliner flagship is equipped with redundant safety features like braking and steering and is intended for series production.

Joanna Buttler, Head of Autonomous Technology Group at Daimler Truck, stated: “Delivering the latest iteration of our autonomous-ready vehicle platform, including production-intent autonomy hardware to Torc marks a significant milestone for Daimler Truck towards series maturity and scaling.”

Daimler Truck North America was the first in the industry to develop a scalable, powertrain agnostic, redundant autonomous vehicle platform. To enable SAE Level 4 autonomous driving, the company has purposefully designed and built redundancy into the Freightliner Cascadia platform for safety-critical systems for safe, driverless operations. With over 1,500 engineering requirements, all translated into features, and a second set of electronically controlled systems like an integrated power network, the autonomous-ready Cascadia sets an industry standard for autonomous systems integration.

The new generation of the industry’s best-selling Class 8 truck in the North American market redefines benchmarks in safety, efficiency, and profitability. In addition to key features for increased aerodynamics and more business efficiency, the new truck offers expanded capabilities for the Detroit Assurance Suite of Safety Systems, an all-new Intelligent Braking Control System as well as Dual Stage Intelligent LED Headlights. The newest version of the Freightliner’s on-highway truck also delivers a greater than 35 percent fuel economy improvement since the model’s first introduction in 2007. Daimler Truck North America installs all essential compute and sensor kits during the vehicle production process. This preparation allows Torc Robotics to seamlessly integrate their virtual driver upon delivery.

Deployed on one of America’s busiest freight lanes between Laredo and Dallas

In addition to existing test routes in New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona, these trucks will also be tested in autonomous mode on a new lane in Texas between Laredo and Dallas mainly on I- 35.

There is significant freight volume moving between Laredo and Dallas, connecting major cities like San Antonio and Austin. Torc recently announced that it has signed a leasing agreement for an autonomous hub in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. This hub will serve as the operational base for its autonomous testing efforts, customer freight pilots, and future commercialization. Torc is driving toward productization, positioning itself to scale and commercialize safe, robust autonomous trucking solutions on this busy freight corridor under real-world conditions.

In 2024, Torc reached another milestone by successfully completing driver-out test runs on a multi-lane test track in Texas. As a next step, Daimler Truck and Torc will further develop autonomous trucks to safely achieve the driver-out capability on public roads.

Peter Vaughan Schmidt, CEO of Torc, said: “Our strong collaboration with Daimler Truck represents six years of success in advancing the future of freight. Fully integrating Torc’s autonomous driver with Daimler Truck’s Freightliner Cascadia platform creates an industryfirst, scalable, physical-AI autonomous trucking solution. This will unlock tremendous value for our customers by addressing key industry pain points and presents a clear opportunity to generate revenue and drive meaningful transformation across the industry.”

Market entry planned for 2027

Daimler Truck and Torc aim to enter the U.S. market with SAE Level 4 autonomous trucks by 2027. In this application, the autonomous driving system takes over the entire dynamic driving task between two freight hubs.

Autonomous trucks can enhance business operations and manage increasing freight volumes, especially during driver shortages. They also have the potential to reduce accidents, as the system remains alert and never tires. Daimler Truck has highlighted the highly scalable and profitable market opportunities that autonomous driving is expected to offer.

Contact Daimler Truck:

Anja Weinert, +1 669 6001478, anja.weinert@daimlertruck.com

Paul Mandaiker, +49 176 30 999 267, paul.mandaiker@daimlertruck.com

Contact Torc:

Laura Lawton, +1 408 505 5820, laura.lawton@torc.ai

Forward-looking statements

This document contains forward-looking statements that reflect our current views about future events. The words “aim”, “ambition”, “anticipate”, “assume”, “believe”, “estimate”, “expect”, “intend”, “may”, ”can”, “could”, “plan”, “project”, “should” and similar expressions are used to identify forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to many risks and uncertainties, including an adverse development of global economic conditions, in particular a decline of demand in our most important markets; a deterioration of our refinancing possibilities on the credit and financial markets; events of force majeure including natural disasters, pandemics, acts of terrorism, political unrest, armed conflicts, industrial accidents and their effects on our sales, purchasing, production or financial services activities; changes in currency exchange rates, customs and foreign trade provisions; a shift in consumer preferences; a possible lack of acceptance of our products or services which limits our ability to achieve prices and adequately utilize our production capacities; price increases for fuel or raw materials; disruption of production due to shortages of materials, labor strikes or supplier insolvencies; a decline in resale prices of used vehicles; the effective implementation of cost-reduction and efficiency-optimization measures; the business outlook for companies in which we hold a significant equity interest; the successful implementation of strategic cooperations and joint ventures; changes in laws, regulations and government policies, particularly those relating to vehicle emissions, fuel economy and safety; the resolution of pending government investigations or of investigations requested by governments and the conclusion of pending or threatened future legal proceedings; and other risks and uncertainties, some of which are described under the heading “Risk and Opportunity Report” in the current Annual Report. If any of these risks and uncertainties materializes, or if the assumptions underlying any of our forward-looking statements prove to be incorrect, the actual results may be materially different from those we express or imply by such statements. We do not intend or assume any obligation to update these forward-looking statements since they are based solely on the circumstances at the date of publication.

Torc Announces New Engineering Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to Further Fuel Autonomous Vehicle Innovation

by Torc | June 24, 2025 | News, Featured | 0 Comments

Torc Joins the Stanford Center for AI Safety to Conduct Joint Research on AI Safety for Level 4 Autonomous Trucking

by Torc | June 17, 2025 | Press Releases, Featured, News | 0 Comments

Securing the Future: Meet Michael Maass, Director of Product Cybersecurity

by Alex Mesa | June 5, 2025 | Cybersecurity, Education, Featured | 0 Comments

Texas Road Tour 2025: Legislators, First Responders Learn About Autonomous Trucking

by Kiley Thompson | Apr 11, 2025 | Education, Featured

Torc at GTC 2025, announcing collaboration with NVIDIA and Flex

On the road again! Our Torc autonomous truck traveled between Austin and Ft. Worth for the Texas Road Tour 2025

Willie Nelson famously sings about being on the road again, and Torcrs (with their love of all things transportation) made that our theme song during the last week of March 2025. Meeting with both state and local government as well as first responders, we put a few more miles on our autonomous truck between Austin and Fort Worth. Read on to find out details of the events.

March 25

We started the week in Austin, Texas, meeting with individuals from the Texas Department of Transportation at their Stassney Lane facility. Torc brought a vehicle to participate in the TXDOT AV Industry Demonstration Day, which showcased innovative technologies including autonomous passenger vehicles, trucks, and drones.

During this event, Torc met with various departments of transportation and departments of motor vehicles to discuss the benefits of autonomous driving and trucking. We had many meaningful conversations focused on sharing Torc’s approach to safety and how AVs can improve the safety and efficiency of freight transportation.

March 26

Torc conducted a First Responder Training event at Torc’s interim lot in Ft. Worth. Torc staff met with law enforcement, fire, EMS, and other first responders to discuss how to safely and effectively interact with Torc trucks.

“A great highlight was seeing how curious and engaged local first responders are about our trucks,” said Anita Kim, Director of Government Affairs and Policy. “They really appreciated the ability to see our technology up close and learn about how to interact safely with our trucks.”

Richard Russell, Torc’s Senior Manager of First Responder Policy, noted the interest of local law enforcement for Torc to conduct more one-on-one training experiences in the future.

March 27

Braving a stormy forecast, we finished the Road Tour back in Austin. We welcomed many individuals at the Texas state capitol where several companies participated in an autonomous vehicle showcase hosted by the Innovation and Technology Caucus of the Texas Legislature.

“Educating policymakers and first responders about how Torc is approaching safety and our future plans in Texas is critical to successful deployment in the state,” said Anita. “It is really important to have collaborative relationships where we operate and we are planning more events in the coming months.”

GTC 2025 Recap: ‘The Competition Is Shocked’ By Progress, Collaboration With NVIDIA, Flex

by Kiley Thompson | Mar 25, 2025 | Featured, News

Sometimes, conferences are so big, they become a city within a city… with a very specific agenda. During the week of March 17, 2025, Over 39,000 people descended on San Jose to see all industry giant NVIDIA had to offer at their annual GPU Technology Conference, or GTC. Too big for a booth, one of Torc’s latest generation of autonomous trucks was stationed in the outdoor GTC exhibit area in Cesar Chavez Park, along with our 2025 custom Torc event experience space.

At the heart of the Torc experience, conference attendees closely inspected a sample of Flex’s Jupiter compute design platform, the scalable deck that holds the NVIDIA-powered DRIVE Orin system-on-a-chip (SoC) and DriveOS operating system. This scalable high-performance production hardware and software platform is already on the roads in our autonomous-ready Freightliner Cascadias.

“It was really exciting to make our GTC debut this week, along with the announcement of our NVIDIA and Flex collaboration,” CJ King, Torc CTO, said at the event. “As we get closer to commercialization, it’s essential to share more of our best-in-class technology and get our world-class engineers out here to meet and share the story of Torc with others.”

In case you missed it: Torc Collaborates with Flex on Physical AI Platform for Autonomous Trucks, Accelerated by NVIDIA

Virtual Reality was one of the most popular attendee experiences across all the exhibitors this year, including the Torc VR, which allows individuals to “see” the built-in redundancies and systems inside the Freightliner Cascadia chassis. The Autonomous Demo Experience, which plays recorded Torc ADS highway drives along with their sensor visualizations, provided context when speaking to visitors about our sensor suite and product acceptance.

“Showcasing Torc’s production-intent hardware, software and AD kit on Daimler’s Freightliner Cascadia at this level created a significant wave of attention,” said Andrew Culhane, CCO. “We’re thankful for the attention we got from the thousands of GTC attendees, reporters, and technology partners. It’s another proof point that we’re right where we need to be right now, leading the pack in autonomy.”

The world’s leader in AI technology, NVIDIA announced the releases of new Rubin GPUs for 2026, Rubin Ultra in 2027, a new Feynman architecture in 2028, as well as the next-gen Blackwell Ultra B3000 GPUs. Jensen Huang’s two-hour keynote address on Tuesday drew over 20k people to San Jose’s SAP Center.

In case you missed it: GM, Gatik, Torc Team Up With NVIDIA to Accelerate Self-Driving

Torc's autonomous truck among the crowd at GTC

Torc Collaborates with Flex on Physical AI Platform for Autonomous Trucks, Accelerated by NVIDIA

by Torc | Mar 18, 2025 | News, Featured

The platform leverages NVIDIA DRIVE AGX with Flex’s Jupiter compute platform and manufacturing capabilities to support Torc’s productization and scaled market entry in 2027

BLACKSBURG, Va – March 18, 2025 – Torc, a pioneer in commercializing self-driving class 8 trucks, today announced its collaboration with Flex (NASDAQ: FLEX), a world-class provider of automotive-grade compute platforms, and NVIDIA to develop a scalable physical AI compute system for autonomous trucks.

The physical AI developed at Torc enables self-driving trucks to perceive, understand, and perform complex actions in the real (physical) world. For Torc, physical AI is the core of its software stack that enables trucks to autonomously perceive and navigate their surroundings end-to-end and in real-time using sensors like lidar, radar, and cameras. This allows the truck to make informed decisions about lane changes, braking, and obstacle avoidance to ensure safe and efficient autonomous driving operations and is the first deployment of physical AI for autonomous long-haul trucking at production scale.

Torc collaborated closely with NVIDIA on a multi-chip adaptable architecture that leverages DRIVE AGX using the DRIVE Orin system-on-a-chip (SoC) and DriveOS operating system, and with Flex for their Jupiter compute design platform and advanced manufacturing capabilities. This provides Torc with a scalable high-performance production hardware and software platform based on the autonomous-ready Freightliner Cascadia equipped with advanced technologies and redundant systems designed to support future deployment of autonomous driving capabilities. This platform was successfully validated by Torc’s driverless product acceptance test on a closed course at highway speeds last year.

NVIDIA DRIVE solutions, paired with Flex’s automotive compute design capabilities, adhere to Torc’s stringent size, performance, cost, and reliability requirements while meeting the total cost of ownership targets of its fleet customers who are pursuing non-stop, long-haul driverless trucking integration. This work provides a true Software Defined Vehicle (SDV) functionality: it is adaptable to ever changing operational design domains, including new lanes, new routes, new hubs, new hardware and sensor configurations, new operational rules, new road conditions, and more.

“NVIDIA DRIVE AGX has been industry-proven in full production for automotive real-time applications at the edge. It delivers the high compute performance, low latency, and multi-sensor connectivity needed for Torc’s sophisticated autonomous trucking software, delivering robust perception, prediction, and planning for safe and reliable operation,” said Rishi Dhall, Vice President of Automotive at NVIDIA. “Torc is on a clear path to scalable production for its commercial launch in 2027 and working toward a seamless upgrade to NVIDIA DRIVE AGX with DRIVE Thor.”

“Our collaboration with Torc, Daimler Truck, and NVIDIA illustrates how Flex partners across the full ecosystem to enable mobility companies to launch next-generation technology with greater resilience and speed,” said Mike Thoeny, President, Automotive, Flex. “We appreciate the trust Torc and Daimler Truck have placed in Flex through leveraging our Jupiter compute platform and advanced manufacturing capabilities to deliver autonomous long-haul trucking at scale.”

“Using Daimler Truck’s autonomous Freightliner Cascadias with built-in redundancy, our work with NVIDIA and Flex is already providing a stable and proven foundation for Torc’s autonomous vehicle technology,” said Torc’s CEO, Peter Vaughan Schmidt, “By leveraging NVIDIA’s DRIVE AGX in-vehicle compute and DriveOS, along with Flex’s Jupiter compute platform, we are able to ensure a low-risk, high-confidence path to production that is able to seamlessly transition as NVIDIA’s and Flex’s solutions continue to evolve.”

Along with Flex, Torc will showcase the advanced capabilities of the joint solution on its demo truck at NVIDIA’s upcoming GTC event from March 17-21, 2025, in San Jose, CA.

About Torc

Torc, headquartered in Blacksburg, Virginia, is an independent subsidiary of Daimler Truck AG, a global leader and pioneer in trucking. Founded in 2005 at the birth of the self-driving vehicle revolution, Torc has nearly 20 years of experience in pioneering safety-critical, self-driving applications. Torc offers a complete self-driving vehicle software and integration solution and is currently focusing on commercializing autonomous trucks for long-haul applications in the U.S. In addition to its Blacksburg headquarters and engineering offices in Austin, Texas, and Montreal, Canada, Torc has a fleet operations facility in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in Texas, to support the company’s productization and commercialization efforts, as well as a presence in Ann Arbor, MI, to take advantage of the autonomous and automotive talent base in that region. Torc’s purpose is driving the future of freight with autonomous technology. As the world’s leading autonomous trucking solution, we empower exceptional employees, deliver a focused, hub-to-hub autonomous truck product, and provide our customers with the safest, most reliable, and cost-efficient solution to the market.

A Product Release, Not a Demo: Why Torc’s Autonomous Product Release v0.1 Was ‘The Next Step’

by Kiley Mitchell Thompson | Nov 13, 2024 | News, Education, Featured

Torc has begun successful advanced validation of our autonomous trucks without a driver in a multi-lane closed-course environment.

As Torc Robotics nears its 20th year of operations in 2025, it has achieved an incredible milestone: a fully self-driving product release validation. More than just a demo, this milestone manifests the hard-won lessons behind Torc’s R&D, advanced engineering, artificial intelligence, machine learning, software best practices, and operational excellence. But if you look past the dramatic images of no human behind the wheel of an 18-wheeler moving at 65mph, it represents a powerful step forward toward an efficient and sustainable freight system that will reshape our supply chain… and you also have a rather standard production stage step.

The autonomous drive without a human driver was a straightforward, product milestone. Additionally important, it marked the critical next step from Torc’s advanced engineering phase to productization on a unified, embedded platform. Not a bolt-on solution, Torc’s integrated Freightliner Cascadia is autonomous-ready, creating more efficient, profitable way to move freight across middle mile routes.

The productization stage of any development process is meant to prove that a product was built correctly, in both reference to customer pain points and needs, and in our case, using automotive and software best practices to create a road-worthy product. Every software you’ve ever used or product you’ve ever bought has likely had some form of product validation stage. In our self-driving truck validation, we need to address the fact that the community needs a safe vehicle for the long-haul journeys wherein a human driver is unavailable. Therefore, our truck must be able to drive on its own. So, our product validation was more than just a demo – it was real time, real speed proof that the software can do what it’s supposed to do, as well as a demonstration of what this technology can do for our customers and our communities.

Amazon originally started as just an online bookstore in the mid-1990s. Jeff Bezos wanted to create “an everything store” but knew that the first step to a full-scale productization needed a controlled, narrow focus. He chose books because they were easily sourced and shippable from specific warehouses, and introduced a simple online storefront. Through this product validation, Amazon was then able to work on logistics, customer service, and online services.

The Torc product management team is quick to point out that this milestone wasn’t a demonstration but simply a stage in a product release lifecycle, marking the next stage of product maturity. “All software needs to have this step to be created,” says Sheila Scanlon, Vice President of Product Management. “You don’t release software until it’s passed all the tests, and while this test was amazing to see, it was a product validation event. This release ties completely back to our product roadmap with a subset of the end features being fully tested and verified, but no software release is ever the ‘final’ release. It’s just like your cell phone: It’s constantly getting upgrades, as will our software.”

Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two PhD students, had the software know-how to create a better and faster search algorithm. They tested on a small controlled, gated data pool at first, Stanford University’s computer network, as their first product validation. After positive feedback and expansion, that search algorithm eventually became Google.

The company’s applied and responsible artificial intelligence (AI) applications, system architecture, production-intent embedded hardware, and directing safety engineering all joined up to get the truck on the road autonomously. From this point until market entry, Torc is working on fully vetted, tested, and traceable software. Our product validation stage is just one chapter in a much longer story.

“This product is never going to be done. This was one step. We’re continuing to build upon the product capabilities and features, with every additional release until our version 1.0 release, which will be available early 2027,” says Scanlon. “It’s a subset of the feature complete. It’s always going to be growing and expanding. New sensors and hardware will be created, and we’ll have better and better capabilities and more and more features, which will allow us to expand our ODD or expand the roads.”

At Torc, we’re targeting initial use cases across the southern United States for our first commercial product launch, scheduled for 2027. Our product validation event has proven that our first leg of freight, in Texas, is a feasible and achievable use case for our technology. As we develop new features and unlock new routes, our self-driving semis will become a powerhouse of safe, efficient, and easy freight.

Torc Takes Texas: Bringing Autonomous Trucking to Ft. Worth, Austin, and San Antonio

by Kiley Mitchell Thompson | May 31, 2024 | News, Featured

A faux road sign offering directions to places like, "TORC.AI", "Feedback St.", and "Stay Connected Cir.".

If first responders and government officials can’t make it to Torc, Torc will bring autonomous trucking technology to them, especially in Texas!

Torc took to the Texas highways May 6 – 9, 2024, visiting locations in Ft. Worth, Austin, and San Antonio. With a traveling, custom-wrapped event trailer as our location on wheels and our ADS-ready Freightliner Cascadia, Torc hosted over two hundred first responders, transportation experts, and the public safety community. The week was filled with amazing conversations about autonomous trucking and Torc’s First Responder Interaction guides, while sharing Torc’s commitment to safety and innovation.

Torc’s First Responder Guide provides information on how first responders can safely interact with our trucks. More information about our First Responder Guide can be found here.

The tour was an important opportunity to share Torc’s vision and provide attendees with a first-hand experience with our innovative long-haul trucking technologies. Guests were able to climb into the truck cab, view the controls, and learn about the sensors, cameras, and software that encompass our autonomous driving system. Importantly, it provided education about the future ahead, answering questions, offering facts, and explaining how autonomy will help shape freight logistics.

Check out the video below for a recap of the event and more information from Michelle Chaka, Torc’s Senior VP of Safety and Regulatory.

In Case You Missed It:

Be sure and check out Michelle Chaka’s webinar on Safely Delivering Autonomous Trucking Solutions