Peter Vaughan Schmidt, the head of strategy at Daimler Trucks, leads the new, global, and cross-divisional organization. He reports directly to Mr. Daum.

Mr. Schmidt has 15 years of experience in the industry and in his previous position he was responsible for the development of Daimler Trucks' strategy on automated vehicles. Mr. Schmidt said, “With the autonomous technology group, we are bringing together our global experts and their vast knowledge in automated trucking. In the first stage, we will focus on use cases of highly automated driving in defined areas and between defined hubs in the U.S.A. In doing so, we will work closely together with customers whose business matches this automated driving application. We will not only develop the respective technology but also set up the required operations infrastructure and network.”

Roger Nielsen, the chief executive officer of Daimler Trucks North America LLC (“DTNA”), which includes the Freightliner brand, said, “We at DTNA are excited to have our automated driving efforts backed by the autonomous technology group. This new global organization will enable us to even stronger evolve the technology for highly automated driving and vehicle integration for heavy-duty trucks at our automated truck research and development center in Portland. We're fully committed to demonstrating the enormous advantages of highly automated driving first here in the U.S.A.”

Daimler Trucks said that software development for highly automated driving will be one of the key activities of the autonomous technology group. Another one will be the so-called vehicle project: On the one hand, the vehicle project will be responsible for the redundancy in the chassis enabling the vehicle's systems to take over roles of a professional driver while on the road. On the other hand, the vehicle project will take care of the automated driving sensor kit integration (camera, lidar, radar), which – together with a very accurate map – is responsible for ensuring that the highly automated truck finds its own way on the road. The operations infrastructure and network to be set up by the autonomous technology group – another key activity – will consist of one main vehicle control center as well as additional stations at logistics hubs, according to Daimler Trucks.

Daimler Trucks added that Torc Robotics will be part of the newly established autonomous technology group, pending approval of the acquisition recently announced by Daimler Trucks. According to Daimler Trucks, Torc Robotics will remain a separate entity and retain its name, team, existing customers, and facilities in Blacksburg, Virginia. In addition, the founders of Torc Robotics will continue to be part of the company's management team.

Learn more: www.daimler.com.