Self-driving 18-wheelers are no longer a concept — they’re running freight on one of the busiest corridors in North America. At Manifest, I sat down with Andrew Culhane, Chief Commercial Officer at Torc Robotics, to break down where autonomous trucking actually stands today and what it takes to get a driverless truck to scale.
We covered:
— Torc Robotics’ AV3.0 architecture and how their hardware partnership with Daimler Truck North America works
— Why I-35 (Alliance, TX to Laredo) is their launch lane and what makes high-density freight corridors the right starting point
— The “illities” — reliability, maintainability, and everything beyond just the driving software (border crossings, weigh stations, roadside inspections)
— Their Torc Autonomous Advisory Council — Schneider, CR England, Penske, Ryder — and how carriers are steering where the product launches
— The sensor stack: long-range and short-range LiDAR, radar, cameras, and the Flex Automotive/Nvidia compute partnership
— Why 2027 is Torc Robotics’ target for driverless trucks at scale
— A cargo theft angle you probably haven’t considered: most theft happens when trucks are parked
Torc Robotics traces its roots back to the DARPA Challenge — one of the original companies in the self-driving space. This is a 10-minute window into where the industry is headed and what it actually takes to put autonomous freight on the road responsibly.
Links:
— Andrew’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-culhane-07013513/
— Torc’s website: https://torc.ai/
