Daimler Truck Looks for Partner in Self-Driving Venture

Daimler Truck is reportedly seeking a partner for its autonomous-driving unit, Torc Robotics.

The goal is to help finance the company’s investment needs, Bloomberg reported Thursday (Sept. 4), citing unnamed sources.

Daimler is working with Bank of America to find potential investors interested in purchasing a minority stake in Torc, the report said. The goal is to raise capital to support the unit’s roughly $660 million in yearly spending.

Daimler Truck owns around 91% of Torc, and the other shares are held by the robotics firm’s founders. Talks are still at an initial stage, and details like the potential size of a stake sale haven’t been hammered out, according to the report.

“In general, Daimler Truck is prepared to consider new investors if they can offer meaningful value to our autonomous driving initiatives and support the company’s growth,” a spokesperson for the truck maker said, per the report.

Torc develops Level 4 autonomous driving technology, which includes systems that can handle all aspects of driving in certain conditions without human intervention, the report said. Its focus is on heavy-duty trucks.

Torc was acquired by Daimler Truck in 2019 and has since been integrated into the manufacturer’s larger effort at commercializing driverless freight transport, per the report.

Daimler Truck last year debuted a “demonstration vehicle” for an autonomous freight offering. It said the offering has the potential to evolve into a modular, scalable platform that is propulsion agnostic for flexible use in a range of trucking applications. It said it plans to launch the offering in 2027.

PYMNTS wrote earlier this year about the rise of autonomy as a service (AaaS), a model in which self-driving capabilities are not just integrated into cars but offered as scalable platforms that are, in many cases, devoid of human drivers.

The trend is giving rise to “driver-out” vehicles, which operate with no safety driver on board, a sign of a leap toward fully autonomous logistics and mobility systems.

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