Self-driving 18-wheelers will soon cruise next to you down Interstate 10 and other major Texas freeways.

TuSimple, a California-based autonomous truck start-up, has been mapping routes and plans to haul commercial loads from Arizona to San Antonio, Houston and other Texas cities. The company will likely make a major announcement next month, Chief Product Officer Chuck Price told me.

Safety drivers will initially sit behind the wheel, but Price hopes to take them out by the end of next year. The age of autonomy has arrived.

“We’re probably going to spend $1 billion to make this happen, and we have investors that are committed to deliver the funds over time,” he said before showing off his technology at the recent SXSW Interactive Conference in Austin.

Price’s confidence comes in stark contrast to most of the news about self-driving technology over the past year. Uber, Waymo and independent analysts have adopted a more pessimistic tone about how soon autonomous passenger cars will hit the road.

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The trucking business, though, is different. Companies dispatch thousands of loads a day along the same fixed routes, from one distribution center to another. Big trucks spend most of their time on the highway, not negotiating tight urban intersections. That makes training the algorithms easier.

Most importantly, the trucking industry is motivated. The age of the average driver keeps rising and finding new ones willing to spend lonely nights on the road is difficult.

Price said autonomous trucks would also increase utilization by 50 percent because robot drivers are not required to take breaks.

“The business argument for cars, to me, has always been weak. The business argument for trucks has always been strong,” Price said. “I find buyers right now who say that if you can make this happen, then I’m buying them by the gross.”

Though a software company, TuSimple has moved beyond writing code to owning and developing hardware. It’s autonomous trucks haul three loads a day for 12 major companies, though Price is not allowed to name them under a non-disclosure agreement. The company operates mostly in Arizona, with a safety driver and technician onboard.

The company plans to grow its fleet to 50 trucks by June to test its software.

“By the time we get to the end of 2020, we’re going to have tens of millions of miles that are proving the system out on fixed runs from Arizona all the way down to Houston,” Price said.

Last week, the company revealed a new proprietary camera capable of seeing 1,000 yards ahead of the truck, even at night. The camera, along with other sensors, allows the computer to plan lane changes and other maneuvers twice as far ahead as a human driver.

“We’re doing the full 360 degrees, 20 times a second,” he added. “We’re replanning our movement based on that 20th of a second.”

TuSimple just closed a Series D funding round, raising $95 million and giving the company a $1 billion valuation. Sina.com, the holding company for a major Chinese social media company, is the largest investor.

Once the equipment and software are proven, TuSimple’s business plan is to provide a self-driving subscription service. The shipping company will buy specially-equipped trucks, and TuSimple will operate and support them from the point of origin to destination.

Price said a self-driving truck could cross the country in two days and save 15 percent in fuel costs because computers drive safer and more efficiently.

“Since autonomy does not have the get-home-itis that a human driver has, it’s motivated in different ways,” Price said.

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Most of us will have no idea the truck in the next lane does not have a driver, Price said. The sensors are not obvious, and the computer is programmed to be courteous.

“I don’t think people will notice our vehicles very much,” he said. “We put a tremendous amount of work into the social behavior of the truck.”

Looking up at an empty driver’s seat, though, will take some getting used to.

Texas and seven other states have cleared the way for testing driverless vehicles, but no agency has approved removing the safety driver from the vehicle yet.

The next few years will test our faith in machines and ourselves. The data so far shows us that self-driving vehicles are much, much safer than those operated by people. Our brain may understand that, but will we need to convince our gut when cruising at 75 miles per hour.

Tomlinson writes commentary about business, economics and policy.

chris.tomlinson@chron.com

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