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Self-driving truck startup expanding in Arizona

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Updated Sep 13, 2018

TuSimple, a self-driving truck solutions company, has been testing its Level 4 Class 8 autonomous trucks in Arizona for more than a year and recently began hauling freight for-profit with commercial carriers in the state.

Earlier this year, TuSimple expanded its testing facilities in Tucson from 6,800 to 50,000 square feet, and in 2019 the company plans to further expand their footprint. To support its growing development program, TuSimple projects it will create 500 new jobs across a variety of fields ranging from engineering and autonomous truck driving to office management.

The company will also expand its autonomous fleet to 200 trucks in the U.S. by 2019. With 500 trucks worldwide in 2019, TuSimple will be the world’s largest autonomous truck fleet. The expansion has a projected total economic impact of $1.1 billion over the next five years.

TuSimple’s camera-centric system has a vision range of 1,000 meters – farther than any other perception system today, the company says —and can “see” 360 degrees around for a pixel-level interpretation of the visible environment, enabling the vehicle to locate itself within four inches of the road at all times.

In 2017, TuSimple secured $23 million in a Series B funding round, and the company raised an additional $55 million of Series C funding in November of 2017.