Autonomous truck tech company TuSimple has partnered with German automotive supplier ZF to develop and commercialise technology for autonomous trucks. The partnership will cover the world’s largest markets, including North America, China and Europe.

TuSimple and ZF plan to co-develop production-quality technologies including cameras, LiDAR, radar, steering and ZF’s automotive-grade central computer ZF ProAI. 

ZF will also support TuSimple’s pre-production driverless autonomous system, and will ultimately serve as the default supplier for their production-ready system for commercialized vehicles.

As part of the partnership, ZF will contribute engineering support to validate and integrate TuSimple’s autonomous system into the vehicle.

“A partnership with world-class supplier ZF is an important milestone for our company as we prepare to bring autonomous-ready trucks to market,” said Chuck Price, Chief Product Officer, TuSimple. “Working side-by-side with ZF to refine and integrate our production-ready technology has allowed us to optimize our hardware stack and focus on scaling these technologies to make it possible for autonomous ready trucks to be mass produced.”

“Our integrated solutions enable the next generation of mobility, and we are thrilled to partner with TuSimple, a leader in autonomous trucking,” said Torsten Gollewski, Executive Vice President Autonomous Mobility Systems at ZF. “A key success factor for virtual driver software is to ensure the system is based on an automotive grade level, including component development and production. The combination of ZF automotive system competencies and TuSimple’s virtual driver software will create the first commercial-ready automotive grade autonomous truck technology platform.”