Autonomous Electric Freight Trucks Scaling Up In Europe Support CleanTechnica's work through a Substack subscription, on Patreon, or on Stripe. Help us produce all of the high-quality, original content we publish week after week despite the challenges of content-scraping AI, antisocial media, inflation, and other hurdles. There’s so much attention on robotaxis and so many companies trying to lead this sector, but there seems to be relatively little news on autonomous long-distance trucking. That seems somewhat surprising since one would think autonomous long-distance trucking would be easier than unpredictable urban taxi service, and might also be significantly more lucrative. Anyway, that’s not to say no one is attempting to crack this nut. For example, in Europe, we’ve got Einride. Last week, Einride and DAF Trucks partnered on a joint initiative to integrate Einride’s autonomous driving system, which is called Einride Driver, into DAF’s premium vehicle platform. Autonomous trucking at scale? We’ll see. “The collaboration marks a significant step toward the large-scale commercialization of SAE Level 4 autonomous electric freight transportation in response to industry challenges such as driver shortages and rising operating costs,” the companies note. “Level 4 refers to a high level of driving automation in which the vehicle can independently perform repetitive driving tasks under predefined conditions, without any need for human intervention. In this way, available drivers can focus on activities in logistic operations where their expertise and judgement add the most value.” (Until someone tries to have AI replace that latter part too….) Here’s how the collaboration is working: “As a first step, Einride and DAF, together with experts from the Dutch independent research institute for applied science and innovation, TNO, will collaborate on defining and testing the integration of Einride’s autonomous drive system within DAF’s ‘International Truck of the Year 2026′ electric truck platform. This