Autonomous truck pilot leads the way to a greener and smarter transport system
We are excited to announce that HAVI Supply Chain has joined forces with the Scania Group to launch a ground-breaking pilot that has the potential to radically transform the operational and environmental performance of the transport systems worldwide.
Another industry first
Essentially, the teams were testing the performance of an Autonomous truck from a parking lot to the motorway and back to the parking lot. HAVI played a role in loading and unloading goods from the trailers at our DCs and manually driving the trailer to/from the Autonomous testing hubs. The 300 km journey from Södertälje and Jönköping was on an autonomously enabled pilot road and supported by a safety driver in the cabin. This clip shows it in action!
Benefiting customers, employees, environment
During an interview at the recent IAA 2022 conference in Germany, which you can watch in full here, Massimo D’Alessandro, HAVI’s Director of Sustainability & Innovation, summarized the benefits of autonomous solution as follows: “For a start, they deliver significant cost and time savings while improving efficiency. It’s also important to recognize that this technology can be very beneficial when it comes to creating a safer, more comfortable and modern workplace for our employees. These trucks are game-changers.”
Rickard Niedomysl, VP North West Europe, adds, the decision to embrace autonomous technology is also driven by customers’ expectations. “Our customers continually look to us to lead the way by looking for new ways of doing things more efficiently, more safely, more sustainably. My view is that HAVI and Scania have the same vision for the future, the same desire to test and innovate and see how we can get better and better.”
The need to change
The pilot launches at a critical time for the global transport operators. Not only are margins coming under sustained pressure, but the shortage of qualified drivers is also presenting serious challenges. Meanwhile, calls for the industry to reduce its carbon footprint are growing louder. As Robert Melin Mori, Scania’s project manager on the initiative, puts it: “We know that the transport system will change in the coming years, so the transformation process towards autonomous technology needs to start right away. We believe the pilot will be a hugely important stepping stone.”
HAVI-Scania: a winning partnership
The pilot is also set to further reinforce HAVI Supply Chain’s credentials as a digital and sustainability leader across the logistics sector. We have already co-operated on number of joint initiatives with Scania designed to accelerate the decarbonisation of the world’s transport networks in Europe and beyond. In Sweden, for example, we operate Scania’s electric trucks while in Finland and Spain we operate its biogas trucks.
The driverless journey starts here
This pilot marks an exciting step in the use of autonomous transportation. Looking ahead, Massimo concludes: “I believe we will see autonomous vehicles used where it makes the most sense to do so in the supply chain. The shift to driverless trucks will strengthen efforts to build a fossil free future. Importantly, it will complement – not compete with – humans as we see autonomous trucks being used on specific routes rather than everywhere.”