Daimler Trucks & Buses is strengthening its market-leading efforts for automated trucks and buses with its new Automated Truck Research & Development Center in Portland, Oregon. This innovation facility is already working in close cooperation with existing development functions for automated driving in Stuttgart and India.

“Automated driving offers enormous advantages in the logistics business, with the potential to mitigate the shortage of truck drivers around the world. From a technological point of view, there is still a long way to go until trucks can drive fully autonomously,” said Martin Daum, member of the management board of Daimler AG, responsible for Daimler Trucks & Buses. “Automated vehicles must be as safe as possible. We are putting all our effort into this at Daimler Trucks. Our new research and development centre is an important milestone on this road. We are strengthening our efforts in this area to leverage synergies in the development of these key technologies across the globe.”

The new research and development centre develops and fine-tunes systems for automated driving at Daimler Trucks & Buses according to a comprehensive technology strategy. The centre‘s experts are dedicated to all aspects of developing, testing, and validating automated vehicles.

Daimler Trucks is investing a total of more than 2.5 billion euros (NZ$4.2 billion) in research and development in 2018 and 2019. More than 500 million euros (NZ$8.4 million) of this will go toward e-mobility, connectivity and automated commercial vehicle technology. This also includes investment in the new research and development centre for automated driving in Portland.