Switching an autonomous vehicle's software from one truck to another has always cost the industry time. It takes things like engineering work, new data collection, retraining, plus the time back on the road validating it all over again. Waabi recently announced that it made that process disappear entirely. The self-driving company announced in a blog post that its Waabi Driver software, trained exclusively on a Peterbilt 579, took control of a Volvo VNL Autonomous truck and drove it safely on highways and complex surface streets from the very first mile. No new real-world data. No simulation data. No fine-tuning. No engineering work. "This was a massive announcement, Thomas. It was massive for Waabi, but for the industry and Physical AI in general," Waabi founder and CEO Raquel Urtasun said in an interview with FreightWaves. The Peterbilt-to-Volvo Leap The test paired Waabi with partner Volvo Autonomous Solutions, and the two trucks couldn't be more different. Sensor placement, vehicle shape, and control systems all vary between the Peterbilt 579 and the Volvo VNL Autonomous. "The sensors are in very different locations. The shape of the truck is very different. The way you control the Volvo VNL is also very different, and it feels very different from driving a Peterbilt," Urtasun said. "Yet we required zero changes. It was directly plug-and-play. Same stack. Same model. Same everything." The Volvo VNL Autonomous handled lane changes, traffic lights, right turns, three-way intersections, and U-turns on its first outing with the new software, according to Waabi. Historically, that kind of platform switch has been one of the toughest problems in autonomous driving. "Up to this point, whenever anyone in the industry wanted to move from one vehicle platform to another, it typically required more than a year of engineering work," Urtasun said. "'Quickly' was actually zero.