The crowded field of developers in the autonomous truck space has winnowed during the past year. Those that remain continue to lay the foundation for large-scale industry adoption. 

The business said late last week that it had raised $5.6 billion in new capital at an undisclosed value. The financing was led by Alphabet, which also owns Google.

Since May, the independent subsidiary of Daimler Truck has been conducting fully driverless truck tests on a multi-lane test track in Texas, the company revealed Oct. 29.

Shares of the Elon Musk-led company have fallen 12% this year through Oct. 22, while all of its Big Tech peers have advanced.

NHTSA said Oct. 18 it will assess whether Tesla’s system, also known as FSD, has the ability to detect and appropriately respond to fog and other reduced visibility conditions.

The evaluation examines multiple facets of operations, from the core self-driving component to the ecosystem of supporting services.

Tesla is embroiled in numerous lawsuits over the Full Self-Driving feature, including from Tesla investors who claim they were misled.

The enforcement action stems from an October 2023 incident in San Francisco in which a Cruise robotaxi dragged a pedestrian about 20 feet before coming to a complete stop.

His new venture — Bot Auto — will operate its own autonomous truck fleet and offer Transportation-as-a-Service to freight customers.

The testing is small scale, with at most five vehicles being run with test drivers at the wheel to do development work.