Daimler Truck’s bet on owning the entire autonomous truck system

HANNOVER, Germany — Daimler Truck CEO Karin Rådström broke driverless trucking into two requirements: a chassis with redundancy built into steering and braking, and software that can replace the driver. Daimler Truck North America (DTNA) builds the first. Torc Robotics, Daimler Truck’s independent autonomous-driving subsidiary, builds the second.

“This setup differentiates us from any other player in the industry,” Rådström said at Daimler Truck’s Media Night, ahead of IAA Transportation 2026. “We’re building the entire autonomous trucking system, from the truck platform and vehicle architecture to the hardware integration and also the autonomous driving software.”

Torc aims to run trucks on public roads with no safety driver in the cab before the end of the year, with first commercial freight operations in 2027 and plans to scale beginning in 2028.

Torc has previously demonstrated driver-out capability: In November 2024, it completed driver-out validation on a multi-lane closed course in Texas at speeds up to 65 mph, according to Torc. Rådström called the public-road run “a major step towards commercialization.”

“For the first time, a Torc truck will be able to drive itself on public roads — not on a test track — and without a safety driver in the cab,” she said. Why Daimler Is Starting in North America The first driverless freight will run on long-haul lanes in North America. “Why North America? Why not Europe? Because trucks in the U. S.

typically travel more than twice the distance every day compared to trucks in Europe, and believe it or not, driver shortages are even more difficult in the U. S. than they are in Europe,” Rådström said. With Freightliner, the company is “the clear number one” in North American heavy-duty trucks, she said. Its Freightliner and Western Star brands held 37.

8% of the North American Class 8 market through June, according to Daimler Truck’s second-quarter investor presentation, which bases the figure on internal analysis. The company has sold more than 1 million Cascadias in the U. S. since the model’s 2007 introduction, Rådström said.

How DTNA and Torc Split the Work “At Daimler Truck North America, we’re developing the autonomous-ready truck platform with built-in redundancy for critical systems like steering and braking,” Rådström said.

“At Torc, we’re developing the AI-driven autonomous system, including the perception, planning and driving capabilities that will operate the truck safely and efficiently within its intended operating domain.”

The split carries into the supply chain, Rådström said in a sideline interview with media in Hanover: Torc specifies the sensors and what it needs, and DTNA’s global purchasing organization supports purchasing, supplier management and setting up the industrial flow. “It’s a collaboration, actually,” she said.

Factory-Fit Hardware for Autonomous Trucks Daimler wants the autonomy hardware installed when the truck is built. “It’s really adding the sensor suite and the compute, which we want to be able to do factory-fit,” Rådström said. “We think that’s one of our strong points compared to some competitors.” That work will start in plants Daimler already runs.

DTNA announced plans on Aug. 6 for a new U. S. manufacturing plant, with construction set to begin in late 2026 and production in 2029. Torc’s scaling target lands a year earlier.

“We’ve actually prepared some of our existing network to do that, because the SOP and when we start scaling, it could be that that happens even before the new plant is actually fully operational,” Rådström said.

Torc’s Three-Phase Path to Driver-Out “The big target right now, and what the team is fully focused on, is getting to driver-out on public roads,” Rådström said. The program begins with a three-phase crawl-walk-run approach, she said. Through the end of the year, Torc plans to expand that step by step to more hours of operation and more road conditions.

˜ “If that works, we are obviously even more confident that we have a good path to start production and really scaling,” she said. DTNA supplies the trucks for Torc’s test fleets, Rådström said.

“Provided that works, I think during 2027 it’s really about closing all those edge cases that aren’t covered by the crawl-walk-run, getting everything production-ready, and starting with a small number of trucks to do commercial freight, and then going into ’28 to be really ready to scale the operation,” she said.

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