San Diego’s TuSimple Holdings, which is developing self-driving technology for semi-trucks, faces a regulatory probe following an April 6 crash in which one of its big rigs suddenly swerved on Interstate 10 near Tucson, Ariz., and sideswiped the concrete center median.
No one was injured, and the damage to the truck was minor. TuSimple blamed the mishap on human error, claiming that a test driver switched from manual to autonomous driving mode incorrectly. The company reported the incident to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Arizona Department of Transportation.
The collision, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal earlier this week, dominated the discussion on TuSimple’s second quarter earnings conference call on Tuesday, overshadowing the company’s mixed financial results.
The Journal article raised questions about whether TuSimple was putting enough emphasis on safety as it tests its technology on public roadways. A purported video of the incident was posted on The Asian Mai Show on YouTube, which is dedicated to trucking. TuSimple responded to the growing questions in a blog on its website on July 26.
Financial analysts on Tuesday wanted to know more about the company’s safety protocols, the status of the investigation and whether the incident might slow adoption of the company’s autonomous driving technology. The company expects the technology to begin showing up commercially in new big rigs in 2024.
“We are a company in transition from research and development to commercialization,” said co-founder and Chief Executive Xiaodi Hou during the earnings call. “This caused some questions about the changes I started making as CEO and if we are prioritizing safety. But here is my commitment to all of you, the stakeholders of TuSimple. We will not achieve commercialization until we are sure we can do so safely.”
Hou took over as CEO in April after being promoted from Chief Technology Officer. While the incident occurred in April, NHTSA didn’t post information about it on its website until late June.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which regulates big rigs and buses, formally requested information about the incident, the company said. The agency’s staff visited TuSimple’s Tucson location, along with personnel from NHTSA. The probe is ongoing.
While several firms are working on self-driving technology, TuSimple has been a leader in semi-trucks. It claims to have logged 8.1 million test miles over the past seven years. It also has achieved multiple driver-out driverless test runs — known as Level 4 autonomy — in big rigs along an 80-mile, pre-mapped route between Tucson and Phoenix. Safety vehicles and law enforcement took part in these driverless tests.
According to the company, two people were in the truck cabin during the April 6 incident. The problem occurred when the test driver and safety engineer in the cab tried to re-enter autonomous driving mode before the system’s computer was ready. Following the collision, TuSimple grounded its fleet of roughly 75 test vehicles and began an internal investigation.
After determining what happened, it upgraded software “to make sure this could never happen again,” said Hou. The company said it hasn’t been restricted by regulators from continuing to test its autonomous driving system on public roadways.
“There are some who have questioned how this could have happened in the first place. That is fair,” said Hou. “But it is also important to keep this (in) perspective. Collectively, our engineers have spent millions of hours building a system that has caused one incident in all seven years of operation. No one was hurt. No property was damaged. And we reported to the appropriate government agencies as we should have.”
TuSimple employs 1,400 full-time workers — a majority of which are based in San Diego. Much of its testing, however, occurs in Arizona, which has permissive regulations regarding the use of autonomous vehicles on public roadways.
The company went public in April 2021, when investor appetite for emerging technology companies was at its peak. So far this year, the company’s shares are down 73 percent. The share price closed Wednesday at $9.71 on the Nasdaq Exchange.
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