Waymo Taps Texas As Its Robot Truck Hub With Dallas Depot

Waymo, the leading U.S. self-driving vehicle company, is expanding its robot truck program by moving into Texas with a new depot in Dallas that will serve as the hub for road-testing its fleet of 18-wheelers. 

Waymo tells Forbes its semis roll into Dallas this week and the Silicon Valley-based company plans to hire licensed local truckers to assist with highway evaluations as safety drivers. It’ll start with a temporary facility this month, as it looks for a long-term base of operations. Mapping of roads in Texas and New Mexico with the high-definition cameras and sensors on Waymo’s autonomous minivans was completed in March ahead of plans to start truck tests in April, before the Covid-19 pandemic delayed things. Waymo isn’t saying how much it’s investing in the project.

The Alphabet subsidiary’s current fleet of 13 Peterbilt trucks, loaded with digital cameras, laser lidar sensors, radar and computing system will be operating on the I-10, I-20 and I-45 interstates and other high-capacity commercial routes between Texas and New Mexico. “In addition to further advancing our trucking capabilities, we’re excited to explore how our tech might be able to create new transportation solutions in Texas, which has a high freight volume and is a favorable environment for deploying AVs,” the company said. 

Making Texas the center of Waymo’s trucking operations makes sense given how big the industry is there, employing one in 16 Texans, according to state data. Autonomous trucking rival TuSimple, which like Waymo also has operations in Arizona, opened its own Dallas depot earlier this year and self-driving startup Aurora, led by the former head of Google GOOGL ’s Self-Driving Car Project, said last month it will also test delivery vans and trucks in Texas. Kodiak, another Silicon Valley robot truck startup created by a former Google engineer has had an operations hub in Dallas since mid-2019. Nuro, a startup also created by two other ex-Googlers, tests autonomous delivery vehicles in Houston. Waymo previously tested autonomous semis in Atlanta, where it briefly ran loads for Google, but the new initiative will be on a larger, more consistent scale.

“Our location and reliable transportation system make Dallas-Fort Worth a center for freight,” said Tom Bamonte, senior program manager for automated vehicles for the North Central Texas Council of Governments. “Waymo’s choice of Dallas-Fort Worth for its automated trucking hub helps the region prepare for the future of freight transportation and secure its leadership position.”

Testing of Waymo’s robotaxi fleet in the Phoenix area has mainly continued during the pandemic, though its Chrysler Pacifica minivans aren’t currently providing rides for people in its Waymo One service as a coronavirus safety precaution. Autonomous minivans in its Waymo Via logistics fleet are also picking up and dropping off packages for UPS and AutoNation AN car dealerships in the Phoenix area.

The company that began as an inhouse Google project a decade ago said last month it raised a total of $3.2 billion in its first external fundraising, with investment from companies including Magna International, Andreessen Horowitz, AutoNation, T. Rowe Price TROW , Perry Creek Capital, Fidelity Management as well as its parent Alphabet.