Self-driving Otto-truck delivers Budweiser

A self-driving truck of the start-up Ot.to made a 120 miles delivery drive without any assistance required by the driver. At this first commercial drive of an autonomous drive, which led from Fort Collins through downtown Denver to Colorado Springs, 51,744 cans of Budweiser were delivered.

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The driver wasn’t even in the driver seat along the interstate I25. This test drive was done in collaboration with Anheuser-Busch. The brewery behemoth makes every year 1.2 millione truck deliveries for their beverages. Alone this reason to reduce costs and increase safety make self-driving trucks of interest forAnheuser-Busch.

Ot.to, which was acquired in August after only eight months of its founding, has announced to sell the first commercial trucks in 2017.

The potential impact to the trucking industry cannot be under-estimated. In the US 3.3 millione people work as truck drivers, in Germany the number is at 540,000.