3 Futuristic Truck Designs That Will Make You Do a Double-Take
We’ve all heard that self-driving cars are fast approaching the market, but did you know that other futuristic vehicles are being produced too? The anticipated technological advances of the near future are sure to rock the trucking industry. In some ways, technology already has.
For starters, truck drivers are required to use an electronic logging device (ELD) to automatically track their driving, eliminating the hundred-year-old tradition of manual inputs. And if that’s not enough, technology to allow one driver to operate multiple vehicles at the same time is fast approaching. Driver Assisted Truck Platooning will mean that a parade of self-driving trucks can connect to one traditionally driven truck in order to reduce carbon emissions and reduce the effects of the driver shortage the industry is currently experiencing.
But how do we translate these interior advances to a truck’s exterior? This is where new truck designs come in!
- Tesla’s Semi – Tesla, everyone’s favorite innovator, introduced their new semi this year. This truck can accelerate from 0 to 60 in 5 seconds without a trailer attached, or with a trailer attached in 20 seconds, making it the fastest semi in the world. To complement its advanced technology, Tesla redesigned the exterior. The new truck looks more like a luxury vehicle than it does a massive freight transporter. Even millennials, who normally shy away from trucking, are dying to get their chance to drive one of these. The industry is seeing these striking trucks on the road in just a few short months.
- UPS’s New Trucks – In order to lower their carbon footprint on the road, UPS purchased 125 Tesla Semi trucks, awarding them the largest order Tesla has seen since pre-orders for the Semi opened. Along with the Tesla order, UPS also plans to deploy a fleet of 35 electric trucks on a trial basis in the UK. The electric trucks, sourced and designed by the British company Arrival, have been referred to as the Pixar trucks. The new design looks like something you would see on screen in Toy Story, The Incredibles or any other Pixar film. We hope to see one of these trucks in the US sometime soon!
- Audi’s Potential New Rig – Artem Smirnov and Vladimir Panchenko love Audi so much that they designed a new rig for Audi and posted it on a Behance page for the company to see and hopefully use. Their design is different, to say the least. First of all, the truck will have no windows and an open cockpit. Furthermore, the truck will be completely self-driving. Though Audi hasn’t announced if they are going to manufacture this design, we can still dream about it, can’t we?
Though these trucks are not on the road yet, they will be wildly anticipated over the next few months by an industry which is undergoing a tremendous amount of technological change. When the time comes for futuristic trucks like these to be on the road, the look of trucking as we know it will change forever. At Kuebix, we are looking forward to the arrival of these designs in 2019 as much as the rest of the industry!
