Plus Readies Autonomous Trucking Launch in China in 2021

December 18, 2020

Plus (formerly Plus.ai), a leading provider of self-driving truck technology, announced an expansion of its strategic partnership with Full Truck Alliance (FTA). Through this partnership, the FAW J7+ truck, powered by the Plus automated driving system and going into mass production in 2021, will be available for sale on FTA’s platform. This will give Plus access to a sales channel that handled transactions for over 10 million truckers and 5 million shippers this year alone. Together, Plus and FTA will help shippers in China reduce costs, improve safety and driver comfort, and increase efficiency.

“As a strategic investor in Plus, we have long believed in the team and its ability to execute on being the first to commercialize automated trucks. We are excited to see mass production of the Plus automated trucking system start in 2021, and to realize our vision of bringing this transformational technology to the millions of truckers and shippers on our platform,” said Tianye Miao, Senior Vice President, Full Truck Alliance.

Shawn Kerrigan, COO and co-founder of Plus, said, “Our partnership with FTA builds towards a future where automated trucks help create exceptional operational value for the long-haul trucking industry with improved safety, fuel efficiency, uptime and driver comfort. We look forward to bringing these benefits to more fleets around the world.”

The FAW J7+ trucks will be sold directly through FAW’s national sales network. The additional channel via the FTA platform will give the FAW J7+ trucks visibility with millions of registered truck drivers and shippers. Each year over a million trucks on the FTA network are replaced. FTA previously sold over 20,000 customized new tractors through a similar arrangement. The scale of the FTA network will help drive sales of the FAW J7+ trucks and allow Plus to accumulate enormous amounts of real-world driving miles in diverse scenarios to prove out the safety and reliability of its driving system.