Futuristic trucks, the trucks of the future are already here

We are facing a heavyweight without a cabin and with autonomous driving. It is designed to operate in controlled, off-road environments such as mines or large construction sites.

The software, and not the driver, who disappears in this model, is the one who tells the truck how to move and where to go at all times, based on the needs of the work being done.

It has a combustion engine powered by renewable biofuels. Little else is known about its engine, although it is said to have a turbocharged V8.

The cabin area, as we said, disappears, maintaining a front module where all the mechanics, the radiator cooling system and the electronics, the brain of the beast, are located.

You have multiple devices that allow you to move safely and efficiently. It has seven cameras, a laser sensor and three radars. All these devices provide information about the environment and possible obstacles or pedestrians that are in its path and surroundings. With all this information, the Scania AXL is able to decide the best route to go from point A to point B and carry it out without human help.

For greater security for people, it has a line of LEDs around its entire perimeter that indicates, through reflection, that it is detecting the person.

Its design also makes it a very versatile vehicle. It has a modular design, mounted on a standard chassis, which allows the AXL to be modified for different purposes at reduced costs.

The Swedish brand Einride also has its autonomous truck model without a cab. In this case electric and designed for the transport of goods. With seven meters in length, it has a range of 200 km and is capable of driving at a maximum speed limited to 85 km/h.

It is already being tested on the road since the Swedish government has authorized the brand to do such tests on one of its roads.

From Einride they ensure that the cost of transport is reduced by 60%, compared to a diesel truck and, although it is autonomous and does not have a security driver, it is designed to be supervised by an operator at distance that you can control up to ten of these trucks while they circulate making their routes. This is possible thanks to 5g technology.

The brand has also presented its T-Log model, based on the same technology as the T-Pod but with design modifications to convert it into a truck intended for transporting wood, with open load and off-road traction, to adapt to unpaved roads.

The T-Pod supports loads of up to 20 tons and has a range of 200 km per electric charge, thanks to its 200 kWh battery.

It is the first autonomous truck to receive the SAE level 4 autonomy certificate thanks to its Nvidia Drive technology, which collects and processes all the information from its multiple sensors, cameras, radars and the Lidar system, which measures the distance to objects from the laser by measuring the time it takes for the laser to bounce off an object.

May 15, 2019 was a key day in its development as it was the day the T-Pod hit the road in real conditions, with real traffic around it, to make a delivery test. Given the complexity and danger of the test, the reluctant Swedish government only authorized a maximum speed of 5 km/h for this test. The approved route is also very short and limited to short trips without lane changes, in an industrial area of Jonkoping, in central Sweden.

One of the most ambitious bets that, they say, will arrive in 2022. The well-known electric car brand Tesla, owned by millionaire Elon Musk, also dares with trucks and presents its proposal: the Tesla Semi.

It was all rumors and conjecture about the development of the Tesla Semi. Many were those who considered the model something that had not come out of the engineers' paper, but in February in Sacramento one could be seen being transported by a conventional truck, in some photos tweeted by @klwtts, and a month later the brand itself published a video in which the Tesla truck was seen circulating around a circuit at a considerable speed, although in the short video a driver can be seen in his futuristic cabin.

One of the main obstacles to manufacturing the model at an industrial level, according to Elon Musk, is that the necessary volume of battery cells is not yet available, and this is what has led the brand to mark 2022 as the year its production will begin.

The Tesla Semi, in addition to being an electric truck and seeking autonomous driving, with a much higher autonomy than its competitors (they promise 800 km), is a wonder when it comes to aerodynamics. The drag of conventional trucks ranges between 0.5 and 1. The Tesla Semi will have a drag coefficient well below 0.36, being more similar to that of a car than that of a truck (the Audi A3 for example it has a coefficient of 0.31 and the Bugatti Chiron of 0.38).

This has been achieved with a cabin that avoids the usual designs of vertical cabins, with an inclined cabin that extends to cover the straight corners of the box, preventing the air from hitting the truck, but that it circulates easily through it. In addition, the mirrors, which cause between 2% and 5% more resistance, have been replaced by cameras. The wheels are also covered to prevent them from causing resistance.

Inside it has a cabin with a single central seat, for a better view of the road and with two large screens where all the parameters of the vehicle and the cameras that replace the rear-view mirrors are displayed.

As far as mechanics is concerned, it has four engines, located on the rear axle, which add up to a total of 1,300 horsepower, according to information not yet official. It will be presented in two types of configurations with different autonomies, of 482 and 804 km per battery charge, although according to Elon Musk himself, in the tests carried out, up to 965 km between charges have been reached.

Its payload will be 36 tons and it is capable of accelerating from 0 to 100 in 20 seconds. Its batteries, also according to unofficial sources, could have a capacity of 1,000 kWh. The chargers of these would be capable of charging enough energy in half an hour to travel up to 650 km.

The prices of the Tesla Semi will be approximately 136,000 euros for its version with 482 km of autonomy and 180,000 euros for its version with 804 kilometers.