Ladies and gentlemen, the first commercial delivery made by a self-driving truck was actually a 120-mile beer run.
Last Thursday, Otto, Uber’s self-driving truck subsidiary, shipped over 45,000 cans of Budweiser from Fort Collins, Colorado to Colorado Springs, marking what executives at Otto and Anheuser-Busch are calling the “first revenue-generating load transported via autonomous truck.” (Otto received $470 for its troubles.)
The truck driver took the reins only to merge on and off the highway. For the remainder of the two-hour journey, however, the driver monitored the 53-foot trailer, which cruised at an average speed of 55 mph, from the comfort of the vehicle’s sleeper berth.
The beer run also had the support of the state of Colorado, where the Department of Transportation worked with Otto in the months leading up to the journey to evaluate the truck’s technology on test runs.
“The initial appeal for us was to see how we could meet the needs of a company like Anheuser-Busch,” Otto co-founder Lior Ron said. “But now after this successful test, we’re eager to see how it will handle other roads and other weather.”
By retroactively installing camera and radar sensors on top of existing trucks, Otto’s technology provides drivers with an unobstructed view of the road ahead. The company hopes to bring safer self-driving technology to American highways, preventing some of the hundreds of thousands of trucking accidents that happen each year.
I think we can all drink to that.