As the trucking industry is under pressure to cut emissions, autonomous technology could be a major part of the solution. Shawn Kerrigan, co-founder and chief operations officer at Plus, a California-based autonomous truck developer, says that autonomous vehicles can help fleets meet their sustainability goals faster.

Shawn Kerrigan: This technology has a number of benefits, and the one that you’re just asking about now is in terms of the sustainability aspect. Well, so just in terms of the application of this technology into standard diesel trucks, you see substantial efficiencies in terms of fuel efficiency, right? So you can see about 10% improvement in terms of fuel economy, and that really depends upon what is the baseline you’re comparing against and how efficient the drivers are at the moment. It also opens the door to even other opportunities.

This is due to eco driving that allows for strategically optimized acceleration, braking, and coasting to increase energy efficiency and reduce fuel consumption.

Shawn Kerrigan: Even within a standard driver pool, there’s a range of fuel efficiency, based on the driver behavior, and what this technology is able to do is consistently perform at the very high end of that range. So, think of it kind of as many of the benefits you get from a PCC type technology, but now you’re able to keep it engaged all the time through the full drive cycle, and using the Advanced sensing perhaps even perform slightly better in some scenarios, right? So it’s really about capturing, taking the high end of that otherwise variable spectrum and then really consistently capturing that all the time while driving.

Another benefit of autonomy is increased vehicle utilization, since the driverless operations would eliminate stops and brakes usually needed to comply with federally mandated hours of service regulations.

Shawn Kerrigan: So that goes back to the notion that you know that trucks can drive at different speeds on the highway, and so you’re able to really optimize the fuel economy if you bring the speed down a little bit to 55 or 65 miles an hour, and still operating safely within highway speeds. But if you don’t have the need to stay within the hours of service right and hit there at a certain time, right, there’s an opportunity to really optimize the vehicles driving for a fuel economy as well.

But the real sustainability leap comes when autonomy meets zero-emission powertrains, then the impact can go even further. Plus and Hyundai, for example, are already charting the path. The companies revealed a joint vision for hydrogen-powered autonomous trucks during ACT Expo in Anaheim, California.

Shawn Kerrigan: In particular, this is because one of the benefits of hydrogen fuel cell, of course, is that you can dramatically lower CO2 emissions from the truck, and now if you can double the utilization of the truck as autonomous trucks can operate about 22 hours a day, you can even basically double the amount of CO2 savings you’re getting per truck. Additionally, this gives you the opportunity to take some of these new, advanced trucks and lower the overall TCO because of the benefit of operating them more and lowering the cost of operations. And then finally, one of the challenges that I think you see with some of these alternative fuel type systems, like the hydrogen fuel cell trucks, is that there’s a need to build out this infrastructure to support the vehicle. And there’s a very nice pairing between the way you build out an autonomous network, segment by segment, as well as how you build out the fueling and support infrastructure for, say, a hydrogen fuel cell truck, right? So there are a lot of nice aspects of how these two technologies fit really well together.

When asked about the rollout of driverless trucks, Kerrigan says Plus is looking forward to rolling them out in the next couple of years, adding that the collaboration with OEM partners like Hyundai, MAN, International and Scania makes it possible.

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