Goodyear supplying autonomous trucking solutions to Plus

The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company has entered into a strategic collaboration with Plus (formerly Plus.ai), a global provider of self-driving truck technology, to provide optimised, autonomous trucking solutions. Goodyear brings a range of services to this collaboration, including connected tyres, and the partners will explore how Plus’s autonomous driving system can incorporate feedback from these tyres into Plus’s online, machine learning-based fuel optimisation, to further improve fuel economy.

Integrating Goodyear’s intelligent tyres with Plus’s autonomous driving system can also improve a vehicle’s overall performance in severe weather and extreme road conditions.

Leveraging fuel efficiency technologies

“Tyres are the only thing on a vehicle that touches the ground and it’s this critical position that can help us enable future mobility solutions like autonomous transportation,” says Chris Helsel, Goodyear’s senior vice-president global operations and chief technology officer. “With our leadership in products and innovation, Goodyear is supporting efficient fleet operations and is pleased to drive more possibilities for the logistics industry with Plus.”

“We are constantly exploring new opportunities to generate more value for customers using our autonomous driving technology,” adds Shawn Kerrigan, chief operating officer and co-founder of Plus. “The collaboration between Plus and Goodyear enables us to leverage both companies’ innovative fuel efficiency technologies, and harness these to further improve the performance of autonomous trucks.”

Goodyear investing $100M in autonomous driving

Plus is already deploying its driver-in autonomous driving solution, PlusDrive, to customers, and Chinese vehicle manufacturer FAW (First Automobile Works) begins producing the FAW J7 L3 truck powered by PlusDrive in the third quarter of 2021. In May the company also announced its entry into a definitive business combination agreement with Hennessy Capital Investment Corp. V with a view to becoming a publicly-traded company, a transaction that will represent a post-combination market capitalisation of approximately US$3.3 billion for Plus upon closing. Shares will trade on the NYSE under the ticker symbol ‘PLAV’.

In addition to this collaboration with Plus, Goodyear is active in the field of autonomous driving through several partnerships and investments. The company established Goodyear Ventures last year and earmarked $100 million for investments in future mobility solutions. In January it announced an investment in autonomous delivery service provider Starship Technologies, and the following month added a stake in TuSimple, an autonomous trucking technology company that operates self-driving trucks out of its facilities in the USA, Europe, China and Japan, to its investment portfolio. Goodyear is also evaluating other solutions for autonomous mobility, such as its airless tyres; it is currently field-testing these with a local transportation authority in the USA.