Waabi unveils autonomous truck made in partnership with Volvo

Self-driving truck startup Wabi shared on Tuesday TechCrunch disrupts Volvo has launched a new autonomous truck developed in partnership with Volvo VNL Autonomous Truck.

The unveiling comes eight months after the Uber- and Nvidia-backed startup announced it Partnership with Volvo Autonomous Solutions Using Wabi’s software stack to create a custom-built truck based on Volvo’s autonomy platform.

Waabi CEO Raquel Urtasun said on TechCrunch Disrupt’s AI stage that the company has the potential to be the first to commercialize self-driving trucks without any human safety drivers or observers. The comment was a slight dig at Aurora, a competitor that launched a commercial driverless service earlier this year. The company added a human observer to the truck cab several weeks later.

“We can drive on normalized surface roads in Texas right now, and in the next few years you’ll be able to see us all over the United States,” said Urtasun, who previously served as chief scientist at Uber ATG before launching Waabi in 2021.

Wabi has similar deals with rival Aurora Volvo and the two companies Unveils a self-driving truck in May 2024. Aurora launched a commercial service, with a human observer on board, earlier this year on a route between Dallas and Houston and announced Tuesday that it is expanding to El Paso. Wabi is using the same truck, but with Wabi’s technology, including a sensor suite, compute and Wabi driver software.

Wabi’s self-driving system, called Wabi Driver, is an end-to-end AI model that enables trucks to scale autonomous driving across different geographies, including highways and normal surface streets. Wabi says it enables commercial operations that are scalable, meet customer needs and work within existing logistics operations.

“Volvo VNL is built for redundancy so you can remove the human driver and you can create a local, safe product,” says Urtasun. “Our sensor poles are super lightweight, making it very easy to integrate into the factory line.”

Wabi’s partnership with Volvo is based on the automaker investment Volvo Group entered the startup in 2023 through venture capital. Volvo participated in Wabi $200 million Series B In 2024.

Clarification: Aurora did not initially launch its commercial service with a human observer in the cab.