Young, Uber-owned startup Otto just made a historic beer run with its self-driving truck.
As seen in the video above, the company has been working to bring automated driving to the commercial-shipping world. Otto teamed with Anheuser-Busch InBev for a one-off stunt: a semi-truck full of beer made nearly all of a 130-mile trip between Fort Collins, Colorado, to Colorado Springs, Colorado, with an empty driver’s seat (an on-board operator is still necessary, particularly for nonfreeway driving). It’s not clear how Otto’s relationship with Anheuser-Busch will proceed, but the experiment intended to offer a future vision for long-haul trucking.
