Autonomous vehicle development company TuSimple today announced that it has successfully tested an autonomous vehicle. As part of testing, an autonomous truck covered a 1500 km transport route in 14 hours 6 minutes, while a truck driven by a driver covers the same distance in about 24 hours.

During testing, the company transported watermelons from the Mexican city of Nogales to Oklahoma City. The truck was reportedly driven by a driver within the warehouses during the loading and unloading of goods, but from Tucson, Arizona to Dallas, Texas, the truck was driven by an autonomous driving system. At the same time, the driver was present in the cabin and was ready to take control in the event of an emergency. As a result, it turned out that the use of unmanned trucks can reduce the time of transportation of goods between the mentioned cities by 42%.

TuSimple intends to start selling autonomous trucks in 2024. Currently, this is not possible due to the fact that different states have different rules for the operation of unmanned vehicles, but soon the US authorities may adopt general rules at the legislative level.

The very same TuSimple, although it is unprofitable, is estimated at more than $ 7 billion. The company employs about 800 employees. It is worth noting that TuSimple has quite a few competitors in the autonomous truck development segment. These include Aurora, a division of Tesla Heavy Trucking, Daimler Trucks subsidiary Torc Robotics, Alphabet’s Waymo, and others.