Outside of Texas, it’s California that has lately generated the most autonomous truck news, despite not hosting the trucks themselves. The primary reason lies in the state’s driverless truck rulemaking process. California until recently had not allowed autonomous truck testing, and has been drafting the rules since 2021. That changed when the state released its long-awaited framework. It’s this framework that has drawn the attention of organized labor from the California Teamsters. The framework took effect April 28, and requires 1 million miles of testing before a driverless truck can haul freight commercially. The Teamsters responded, suing on Aug. 5, 2026, arguing the state moved too fast. The union’s lawsuit in Alameda County Superior Court does not attack the substance of the driverless truck rules. Instead, it attacks the process that produced them. Teamsters California says the DMV routed the rules through an expedited track reserved for minor updates carrying less than $50 million in first-year costs or benefits. The agency thereby “circumvented laws requiring the agency to study and publicly disclose the economic impacts,” the union says. Nothing in the filing stops the DMV from processing applications, and the permit queue has kept moving. Aurora Innovation and Kodiak AI hold drivered testing permits, and the agency’s roster of 28 permit holders includes Gatik and PlusAI. The near-term constraint on those companies is the calendar, not the courtroom. PlusAI published its own readiness scorecard on Aug. 10, reporting 93.4% safety case readiness, 99.8% autonomous miles, and 85.2% remote assistance-free trips. The developer is targeting 100% on the safety case and more than 90% on remote assistance-free trips before it takes drivers out of the seat commercially in 2027. None of that happens in California first. PlusAI runs its commercial pilot in Texas with International Motors and Ryder on a daily