Last week, Arizona celebrated the grand opening of TuSimple’s Tucson, Arizona facility to mark the expansion of the company’s research, development and operations expansion in Arizona.
TuSimple, founded in San Diego in 2015, develops “the world’s most-advanced self-driving technologies specifically designed for heavy-duty trucks” with the aim to “develop self-driving trucking technology to make freight transportation safer, more efficient, and environmentally friendly.”
TuSimple has had a presence in Tucson since 2017. Of the company’s Tucson operation, Xiaodi Hou, Co-Founder and CEO of TuSimple, said that since coming to Arizona, the “team in Tucson has developed and strengthened industry-leading technology that has made significant progress in advancing safe and reliable autonomous trucking – including the world’s first commercial trucking runs on public roads with no driver onboard.”
The company’s technology employs strategically located terminals to connect shippers, carriers, and fleets to the TuSimple Autonomous Freight Network (AFN), creating a “network effect” in which increased numbers of terminals and mapped lanes improve the overall value of the autonomous trucking service network. In addition, every autonomous truck uses proprietary three-dimensional high-definition digital maps, which serve as a “digital pathway for the L4 self-driving trucks to follow and support nearly all aspects of TuSimple’s autonomous trucking system by statistically encoding predictive knowledge of the road environment that has been accumulated over time to ensure optimal safety and efficiency.”
TuSimple’s technology is designed to solve multiple problems, including road safety, truck driver shortages, fuel efficiency and carbon emissions, and operational costs. According to TuSimple, its systems “can potentially save users up to 40% on operating costs while addressing a current shortage of some 60,000 truck drivers expected to double over the next few years.”
According to an Arizona Commerce Authority press release, the growing Tucson campus “will host the company’s expanding workforce and multiple state-of-the-art labs dedicated to developing and testing advancements in electrical engineering, sensor development, and mechanical engineering. Among other expansions, the facility will also host a new training lab for Test Engineers.”
In his remarks at the celebration event, Governor Doug Ducey noted Arizona’s increasing dominance in the advanced automotive industry, saying, “Arizona is the automated vehicle capital of the world, and TuSimple helped drive this innovation to our state. This expansion brings hundreds of well-paying, high-tech jobs to Southern Arizona and demonstrates once again that Arizona is the best place in the world to develop and scale advanced mobility technology.”
TuSimple is already running autonomous freight in Arizona in collaboration with commercial partners, including UPS, the Postal Service, McLane Cos., freight carrier U.S. Xpress, and Penske Truck Leasing, and the company has plans to continue expanding its interstate trucking routes and partnerships. Its growing presence in Arizona and the city of Tucson has already created hundreds of high-paying tech jobs and contributed to establishing Arizona as a hub of innovation, and its expansion plans will continue to play an important role in solidifying Arizona’s national reputation in this sector.