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Summary
In this episode, Julie Gates interviews Sasko Cuklev, head of on-road solutions at Volvo Autonomous Solutions, discussing the advancements and future of autonomous trucking. They explore Sasko's long tenure at Volvo, the transformation of the trucking industry due to technology, and the importance of customer collaboration in developing autonomous solutions. The conversation also covers the operational aspects of autonomous trucking, the hub-to-hub solution, regulatory challenges, and the steps needed to scale these solutions commercially. Finally, they touch on the learnings from ongoing operations in Texas and the future milestones for Volvo's autonomous trucking initiatives.
Takeaways
Sasko Cuklev has been with Volvo since 1994, focusing on autonomous solutions since 2015.
Volvo is implementing autonomous trucks in mining and highway trucking.
The trucking industry is undergoing a transformation due to new technologies.
Customer collaboration is key in developing autonomous solutions.
Volvo offers a full solution for autonomous transport, not just trucks.
The hub-to-hub solution involves specific terminals for autonomous trucks.
Regulatory frameworks for autonomous trucking are currently fragmented.
Safety is a top priority in developing autonomous trucks.
Scaling requires a robust digital and IT infrastructure.
Learnings from Texas operations will inform future developments.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Autonomous Trucking and Sashko Sukhlev
03:45 Sashko's Journey and Role at Volvo
06:24 The Transformation of the Trucking Industry
09:18 Customer-Centric Development of Autonomous Solutions
11:53 Understanding the Hub-to-Hub Solution
14:31 Regulatory Framework and Its Impact
17:35 Safety and Scalability in Autonomous Transport
19:57 Learnings from Texas Operations
22:53 Future Plans for Autonomous Trucking
23:03 trueCrime-intro-high-long.wav
In this episode, Julie Gates interviews Sasko Cuklev, head of on-road solutions at Volvo Autonomous Solutions, discussing the advancements and future of autonomous trucking. They explore Sasko's long tenure at Volvo, the transformation of the trucking industry due to technology, and the importance of customer collaboration in developing autonomous solutions. The conversation also covers the operational aspects of autonomous trucking, the hub-to-hub solution, regulatory challenges, and the steps needed to scale these solutions commercially. Finally, they touch on the learnings from ongoing operations in Texas and the future milestones for Volvo's autonomous trucking initiatives.
Takeaways
Sasko Cuklev has been with Volvo since 1994, focusing on autonomous solutions since 2015.
Volvo is implementing autonomous trucks in mining and highway trucking.
The trucking industry is undergoing a transformation due to new technologies.
Customer collaboration is key in developing autonomous solutions.
Volvo offers a full solution for autonomous transport, not just trucks.
The hub-to-hub solution involves specific terminals for autonomous trucks.
Regulatory frameworks for autonomous trucking are currently fragmented.
Safety is a top priority in developing autonomous trucks.
Scaling requires a robust digital and IT infrastructure.
Learnings from Texas operations will inform future developments.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Autonomous Trucking and Sashko Sukhlev
03:45 Sashko's Journey and Role at Volvo
06:24 The Transformation of the Trucking Industry
09:18 Customer-Centric Development of Autonomous Solutions
11:53 Understanding the Hub-to-Hub Solution
14:31 Regulatory Framework and Its Impact
17:35 Safety and Scalability in Autonomous Transport
19:57 Learnings from Texas Operations
22:53 Future Plans for Autonomous Trucking
23:03 trueCrime-intro-high-long.wav
Creators and Guests
What is The Future of Transportation?
This Podcast will focus on the future of transportation. Such as driverless cars, autonomous trucks, flying vehicles and much more!
Julie Gates (00:53)
Welcome to the Transportation Channel and the Future of Transportation podcast. We are doing a great series on autonomous trucking right now. And joining us right now is Sasko Cuklev, who is head of on-road solutions at Volvo Autonomous Solutions. How are you doing, Sasko?
Sasko Cuklev (01:08)
Hey Julie, I'm doing great. Thank you for having me on the show. It's fantastic to be here.
Julie Gates (01:14)
Great to have you here. I know Volvo has you living in all kinds of places. Are you in North Carolina? Are you in Texas? Where are you today?
Sasko Cuklev (01:22)
I am in North Carolina in the beautiful city of Greensboro where we have the Volvo North America head office, you can say. And that's where I'm spending parts of my time. The other part is in Texas, in Fort Worth, where we are doing the implementation of autonomous trucks, the autonomous solution that we are developing.
Julie Gates (01:45)
It's very exciting news. So I want to talk a little bit about your career. It's really interesting to me to see how long you've been at Volvo. You went out, you earned a couple of engineering degrees and how long have you been with Volvo now?
Sasko Cuklev (01:57)
Yeah, it's quite a long time. I've been within the Volvo Group since 1994, so 30 plus years in different positions. To start with very much within product development since 2015 on the commercial side. since then, basically, end of 2015, 2016, I've been working with autonomous solutions, so heavily involved in...
in most of the activities that we have up and running or have had running in regards to autonomous.
Julie Gates (02:31)
This is pretty impressive to work so long for one company. What keeps you there?
Sasko Cuklev (02:36)
It's a fantastic company. I'm born and raised in Gothenburg, which is the heart of Volvo. I have parents that have worked at Volvo. I have a brother that is working at Volvo. It's a fantastic company with a fantastic culture. And I've always felt that...
I've always been in positions where I feel that I can make a difference and still develop and with that amazing culture then I've not had a reason to go somewhere else.
Julie Gates (03:03)
That's cool. It's very similar in the United States with Detroit. A lot of people have multi-generational families working for the auto makers there too. That's wonderful. So I want to hear about your current role. You are doing some amazing things with autonomous trucking. So tell me about your Head of On-Road Solutions role. What exactly do you do with your role?
Sasko Cuklev (03:11)
Yeah.
Yes, I can say that within Volvo Autonomous Solutions, we are focusing on two industry verticals, two segments, you can say. So one is mining and quarries more confined areas, where we are very much focusing on Europe, the Nordic countries. I think that maybe you have seen what we doing in Norway, mining Norway together with our customer there, Brønnøy Kalk where we have...
and implementation in commercial use now, like, and have had for a while. So no, no human in the loop, no safety driver. are fully autonomously moving limestone from the mine to a nearby crusher. And we are now into, you can say a start of a scaling where we are doing implementation of the three and four and so on. So that is one industry verticals. The other one is highway trucking And that is what we call On-Road Solutions. So that is my responsibility.
where we are starting up in US. And basically that is what we're doing in Fort Worth in Texas.
Julie Gates (04:17)
Right. So there's a lot of transformation taking place in the trucking industry. What is going on? Why is our transformation happening right now?
Sasko Cuklev (04:25)
No, mean, it's very much due to the technology that is coming up, of course. So a big transformation. We have the whole sustainability area with better electric vehicles, alternative fuels and so on. And then, of course, the autonomous piece that has a potential to impact or we see a great potential with that technology and that will.
impact the trucking industry for the better, because we know that we have some pain points and problems today with how it works in terms of utilization, driver shortage, and so on and so on. And here we believe that safety, here we believe that autonomous technology can play a big role.
Julie Gates (05:10)
I saw a data point that kind of blew my mind. It said in the US, more than 70 % of all goods transported are done by trucks and that freight volumes are expected to 5X by 2050. That's astounding. So clearly there's a need for what you are doing.
Sasko Cuklev (05:22)
Yes.
There is a need for new solutions and as I said here, we believe that autonomous can play a big role. So, I mean, now maybe it's not the best market situation from a trucking industry perspective due to different reasons that are happening right now, but all the trends are showing that there will be a big need for more transportations as we go.
Julie Gates (05:47)
Mm-hmm, that's really helpful to know. I know for you, you have a great passion for customers. It's everywhere all over the internet, wherever you speak, whatever's on your LinkedIn, you really care about your customers. So you've been building out these solutions in partnership with customers. Tell me about why you're doing it this way instead of Volvo just creating something.
Sasko Cuklev (06:05)
No, but
here I think that we had at least to start with a little bit different approach where we said that let's not think that we know everything best here. Everyone is in a transformation. We are, our customers are. Of course, we had our thinking and hypothesis about how this will...
how this will impact and what kind of solutions we need to create. But we said, let's join forces with our customers and develop them together with our customers. And that is basically what we have done so that we can learn from each other. So we support them and guide them in their transformation. But of course, they support us and guide us also in our transportation. So what do we need to do? And how should we offer these solutions as we go and so on? And we have done that.
We've been official with some of our customers, who they are, like DHL, Uber Freight We have a couple of others as well that we have not officially talked about who they are, but that is super important for us and has been a key in the whole development that we doing currently.
Julie Gates (07:06)
Can you think of a specific example of how something helped by getting that customer feedback as you're building out your solution?
Sasko Cuklev (07:13)
Yeah, of course. mean, we have, if you take DHL as an example, we have been hauling freight together with them now for quite some time. And we early on developed the autonomous process and procedures that have to be in place when we have an autonomous solution. And we did that together with DHL. And in that then we started to look into, okay, which parts should you be responsible for? Which should we be responsible for?
And they've been very open also from their side that this solution might also lead to that they have to change something in their way of working, which they're used to today. And with that, we have been helping each other. So clear, sort of defining the processes, procedures, clear responsibilities. Then we started to haul freight together according to that process. But we did that with manually driven trucks and drivers, like regular trucks and drivers, just to simulate, learn.
and we have learned many things, we learn every day. Now we are in the stage where we have introduced autonomous trucks, but still with a safety driver. So we do basically the same, of course, with all the learnings. Now we hold the freight autonomously with safety driver, and then the last step will be to go fully autonomous.
Julie Gates (08:26)
Right. And you're also offering everything A to Z, right? You're not just dropping off a truck and saying, have fun. What solutions are you offering in this Autonomous Transport as a Service?
Sasko Cuklev (08:36)
Yeah, so, and that is also with the customer in mind. So we said early that, we believe that the best way for our customers to onboard a new technology like this without jeopardizing what they're doing today. their, their operations of today, which is super critical for them. So without jeopardizing that, they need someone that can.
offer them the full solution, be the one-stop shop, so that they don't have to talk to the OEM, they don't have to talk in the same time as they have to talk to the AD company and some other company and so on. It should be with us. And that's why we say that we offer them that full solution. And when we talk about an autonomous solution, I think...
Early on it was very simplified. When we started with this, was more like, yes, give us the truck and we will do the rest. We heard that from some of the companies. It is not only about an autonomous truck. So you need the truck, of course, and the virtual driver, but you need to have other things. We talked about specific terminals. You need to have the whole off the market network or the uptime set up so that you have a high availability and utilization of the truck.
different operational procedures need to be in place. You need to have a digital and IT setup where you have seamless integration between truck driver, customer, terminals on all of that needs to be in place. So it is more complex than just taking a truck today. Sasko is driving it tomorrow. It's a robot. It is, it is something else. It's more complex and, and it will require
quite some effort to get that in place and that's what we are offering our customers. With that said, we are very humble on what the future business model will be. We think that Transport as a Service is the best way to start for our customers. But then as we go and the technology matures, we know better exactly what it means. We are open for different models and we are actually exploring other models together with our customers already today.
Julie Gates (10:33)
That
makes sense to start this way and then to gently loosen up so everyone gets comfortable with their part of the role. But I think for the normal citizen who doesn't really know what is happening, we could talk a little bit more about Texas. How exactly does autonomous trucking work? Because clearly you're just not releasing a vehicle. There's still non-driving activities that humans need to do, right? You still need to do like pre-inspections and fuel vehicles. So can you kind of walk us through?
Sasko Cuklev (11:01)
you
Julie Gates (11:01)
What
part is the autonomous part and what part is DHL or your customer? Just tell us a little bit about how this works.
Sasko Cuklev (11:08)
Yeah, so,
and that is what I talked about in the beginning, like the processes and procedures that we have in place. So, but very simplified then. So we have a load that needs to be transported from some customer, customer depot, customer hub. That truck, that load is today driven manually with a manually driven truck to
in the rural areas, the industrial areas or wherever that hub is to a terminal or a hub dedicated for autonomous which is next to the highways. drives in there, there we swap the trailers from a manually driven truck to an autonomous. That autonomous truck is then sent out from this terminal entering the highway, doing the long stretch, the long hauling on the highway autonomously and then
At the destination point, does the same, in reverse, can say it drives into the terminal and then we swap and then we deliver it with a manually driven truck. Then of course, it's a lot of activities here that has to happen from like you tendering a load, accepting it, dispatching it, monitoring it where it is on the road. So that is very much the digital and IT.
activities that we talked about. There is operational activity that you mentioned that have to take place at the terminal or at some other locations in terms of fueling, pre-trip inspections, post-trip inspections, how do we handle weigh stations and so on and so on. So many other activities. Again, it is not as simple as just having a robot into a truck and then you
Julie Gates (12:32)
Thank you so much.
Sasko Cuklev (12:42)
you send it away. There are many activities that the driver does today that is not only driving. So we need to handle those in some kind of way.
Julie Gates (12:51)
So clearly there's still a role for humans in this operation.
Sasko Cuklev (12:54)
Definitely, definitely, definitely.
Julie Gates (12:57)
So is that what the one you described, is that what we're calling the hub to hub solution?
Sasko Cuklev (13:02)
That is what we call the hub to hub solution. Yes. So there will be a network of specific autonomous terminals and we are starting up in Texas on two lanes. It is between Dallas and Houston and Fort Worth / El Paso. That is where we start. Then we will expand from there. We are working on a couple of different scenarios, how to expand. We will pretty much base that on our customers' input. So of course, if all our customers want us to go,
somewhere before we go somewhere else, that is of course important for us and we will try to listen to them as much as we can.
Julie Gates (13:36)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that customer feedback loop sounds really important to you through the process. How did you land on Texas?
Sasko Cuklev (13:41)
Yeah, Texas, besides that it is a fantastic state and nice people. I think there are like three main reasons for why Texas, would say on a very high level. So a huge freight corridor. a lot of freight moved in Texas, a lot of big cities, a lot of our customers are present there and driving there. Nice weather from an autonomy perspective. So sunny, more or less.
Julie Gates (13:44)
Yeah.
Sasko Cuklev (14:09)
year-round and then a friendly regulatory framework you can say. we can drive autonomously in Texas today. I would say those are the three main reasons.
Julie Gates (14:20)
Mm-hmm. And so that's how you're determining your routes pretty much. You started out with climate, of course, regulatory issues or concerns or support, and then where your customers want to go. That's how you're launching.
Sasko Cuklev (14:31)
Yeah, I always say that number one for me is always the customer. So when you said it was number three, it's always the customer input. think we always start with our customers and their inputs. So you can say we talk to them and then we look into can we go there or not? And that is very much based on the technology and the regulatory framework that is in place in the difference. where we now want to.
Julie Gates (14:54)
Let's talk about regulatory
framework then. What are you seeing and what are you hoping for and wanting to build as you move forward with regulations?
Sasko Cuklev (15:01)
First of all, we are heavily involved in different discussions on both like a state and a federal level to make sure that we get the framework that is needed for autonomous. I would say it's a little bit fragmented today where we have states that are very open while others that are not that much. If I would have
wished for something it is that we get a more harmonized framework for autonomous so that we can transport, especially when you start to go across states, so that we have everything in place so that we can really take the long stretches that we feel or we think are the most beneficial from an autonomous perspective.
Julie Gates (15:41)
Yes.
So you're working on national legislation or you're working primarily with states at this point.
Sasko Cuklev (15:55)
We are involved in all the different levels, I would say, trying to impact and share our view. again, back to safety, is like in our DNA and the core of everything we do. And that is one of the big things that we want to communicate that.
Julie Gates (15:57)
everything.
Sasko Cuklev (16:16)
our solution is safe, how we work with safety and so on, which I guess is important that people know.
Julie Gates (16:24)
So probably lots of demos and lots of discussions. Thankfully, safety is in your DNA. So at least you bring that to the table when you start your conversation. So that's good. So what do we need to see? What do we need to scale the autonomous transport solutions commercially? What needs to happen to scale?
Sasko Cuklev (16:27)
Yes, yes.
It is.
Yes, yes, definitely.
There are many things, but I would say if I have to say something to, I will mention a couple of things, but to start with again, safety. So we have to have a safe solution. And if we start with the truck, it is not the regular truck that you will see on the roads. It is something different. is what we sometimes call as like an autonomy enabled truck, which is built
ground up with safety in mind and with industrialization and scaling in mind. So for us, it has been important to develop the truck and own the add-ons to the truck. And here from a safety perspective, we talk about redundancies. So we have a couple of key safety critical systems that need to have redundancy, meaning that we simplify, you can say have double systems. So we will have to
two different ways of the braking, two different ways of stopping the truck. So two different ways of braking, steering, power management, compute, communication, motion management. So in all of those, we have double systems and all of that from a safety perspective. And then again, also like...
We early on decided to let's not take a standard truck of today and do an outfit of that with the redundancies because we had industrialization and safety in mind. we want to sort of develop it, build it and manufacture it from our factories. So these trucks will come out.
with our drivers hardware on from our main line in our main factory in New River Valley in Virginia. And that is how we get scale so that we can faster go from tens to hundreds to thousands. To work with upfitting trucks, we believe that that is hard to get scalability. So that has been important for us. And then also to get the quality stamp that this is...
This truck is developed according to Volvo's safety measures, quality measures. That has been important. Then on top of that, we of course work heavily together with our driver partners. We have two partners today. It is Aurora and it is Waabi where safety is really key there as well. So we have an extensive safety framework where we cross-functionally have checkoffs from a safety perspective that the solution is safe. So that is important.
But then again, in order to scale this and make it commercially viable, you need to have the other parts that we have already touched upon. So the whole digital and IT environment, the uptime set up here, we have partnerships with our dealers. So we work tightly together with our dealers in Texas, Bruckner's and Vanguard. have set up a, you can say an aftermarket network of service points across, along those two routes that I mentioned to you.
so that if something happens that we easily and fast can recover and get the truck up again. Operational procedures that we have talked about and terminals. So of course a lot of effort put into the truck and the driver, but there are many other things that need to be in place also to make this a commercially viable and scalable solution.
Julie Gates (19:57)
One of the questions that one of my colleagues sent my way was that those scale of vehicles are just hard to maneuver in general. They're just so big. Is the only interaction at this point that a general person in a car would have with these vehicles is on the highway because the hubs are just right off the highway. They're not driving basically through cities or where other people are going to be interacting with them.
Sasko Cuklev (20:19)
No, not our solution. We are implementing the hub-to-hub solution. So these will only drive on, yeah, it will be maybe a short stretch from the terminal to enter the highway, but basically on the highways. That is how we will start. And of course, as the technology matures, who knows? It can be that we might potentially be able to go the whole way to the customer hub.
Julie Gates (20:30)
I'm gonna have
Sasko Cuklev (20:45)
City driving, yeah, we are not there and that's not part of our...
Julie Gates (20:48)
Yeah.
Well, and consumer adoption too. I'm not sure the consumer's quite ready either, right? We need to see it. We need to see it on our highways and see how it's working. So what are some of your learnings so far as you've been doing the Texas driving?
Sasko Cuklev (21:02)
Yeah, I mean, as we have already touched upon, we learn every day. it can be both on the technology side, it can be in terms of interactions with our customers, who does what, how should we, what kind of offerings should we have to our customers? What kind of business models we touched upon that? What kind of contracts should we have? So there's so many things that we need to have in mind and think about. again, we learn every day and yeah.
That's why we have been doing this for quite some while now and focusing on the full ecosystem, the full solution and not only on the truck and the driver.
Julie Gates (21:38)
That's exciting. So what is next for you?
Sasko Cuklev (21:39)
Yeah.
Next for us is, as I mentioned, we have our first trucks in Texas, a handful where we are holding freight together with our key customers between Dallas and Houston. We will bring in more trucks during the year so that we will have...
We have talked about that we will have a launch fleet that is like 20, 25 trucks. So that is coming now for the rest of the year to bring them down, come get them down to Texas. And then the next big milestone is to get ready to remove the safety drivers so that we are fully autonomous.
Julie Gates (22:16)
That'll be a big day, wow.
Sasko Cuklev (22:16)
The
other pieces are more or less in place in terms of building the ecosystem. I mentioned that we have the service network in place, the operational procedures in place, we have the operational staff in Fort Worth. So yeah, it's a lot of hard work still to do, but we are getting close.
Julie Gates (22:34)
Yeah.
Maybe what's next is you have to get a home in Texas.
Sasko Cuklev (22:38)
Yeah, maybe, maybe, Yes.
Julie Gates (22:41)
spending a lot of time there. Well, thank you,
Sasko Cuklev for joining us from Volvo Autonomous Solutions. It's so great to learn about the next phase of autonomous tracking and Volvo, of course, leading the way. Appreciate you joining us.
Sasko Cuklev (22:53)
Thank you very much for having me.
Julie Gates (22:55)
No worries. For more information, you can go to VolvoAutonomousSolutions.com and you can always find out information about us at TheTransportationChannel.com.