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Thami Masemola
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Date published: 18/12/2020
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Category: News
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Tags: Scania; South Africa; Africa; part of the Volkswagen Group;
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Scania AXL autonomous Truck
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Scania is one of the world’s most recognised heavy transport providers. They produce and sell trucks and buses for over 100 countries globally. In South Africa they have their only regional centre in Africa. Last year in 2019, over 152 400 Scania products were sold, a record that will obviously not be repeated this year. Being part of the Volkswagen Group means the brand is in tune with current trends in connectivity, specifically autonomous mobility. That is one of the reasons Scania decided to create an autonomous (or self-driving) truck concept.
A number of car manufacturers have been developing self-driving or autonomous concepts for some years now. Some have used the approach of levels, whereby each new generation car gets added autonomous features such that at level 5 the car is completely self-driving. None has achieved this yet, but they are working on it. Others are developing autonomous cars straight from the word go. No incremental tech to lessen human involvement.
Scania has recognised this future where humans are completely removed from the driving process for various reasons, mainly their own safety. They conceptualised a heavy duty mining truck that would drive itself throughout its tasks and duties, without human intervention. It was one of the company’s biggest and most ambitious projects, which took about a year to complete. A short time in motor vehicle development.
You can watch the YouTube video of how Scania went about creating, developing and finally testing this concept through the comments of the people who were running the project.
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