Uber’s Self-Driving Semi-Truck Completes A History-Making Beer Run

The future is here in the form of driverless 18-wheelers developed by a tech company named Otto acquired by Uber for $700 million dollars. The online transportation company partnered with Anheuser-Busch and used their new truck to drive more than 120 miles down I-25 last week from the brewery in Fort Collins to Colorado Springs carrying 51,744 Budweisers, or 2,156 cases.

The big-rig, equipped with an array of cameras, radar and LIDAR sensing technology, kept an average speed of 55 mph, all while using GPS and hyper-accurate digital maps created on a scouting run to guide the way. Since it was a trial run, there was a police cruiser in tow and a truck driver hanging out back in the sleeper cab.

The company said this is the first time a self-driving truck had been used to make a commercial shipment.

“We wanted to show that the basic building blocks of the technology are here; we have the capability of doing that on a highway,” said Lior Ron, the president and co-founder of Uber’s Otto unit. “We are still in the development stages, iterating on the hardware and software.”

Click below for footage of the beer-run and an interview with Otto’s co-founder:

“By embracing this technology, both organizations are actively contributing to the creation of a safer and more efficient transportation network,” Ron said in a statement. “We are excited to have reached this milestone together, and look forward to further rolling out our technology on the nation’s highways.”

Truck driver Walter Martin, who was in the rig for the beer run, said of the machine’s performance, “I proclaimed to one of the technicians that I don’t think I could have done that better myself.”

Uber recently announced its plans to enter the on-demand shipping business with a new division called Uber Freight, all the while testing their semi-autonomous passenger cars in Pittsburgh capable of driving unassisted 70 percent of the time.

Budweiser’s head of logistics told Reuters that with Otto’s success, “we can see a future where this type of equipment is standard on all trucks.”

To commemorate the beer run, Budweiser created 45,000 specially-designed Otto cans to be sold to the public in stores.