Autonomous Class 8 EV developer Einride announced a partnership with Bridgestone to co-develop safer and more efficient solutions for commercial fleet EVs. Through the partnership, Bridgestone becomes the exclusive tire supplier to Einride’s electric and autonomous trucks in the US. In turn, Einride will provide trucks and digital services to Bridgestone’s logistic network to help electrify a majority of its transports by 2025.
Einride is a Swedish technology company founded in 2016 that develops commercial mobility solutions using electric and autonomous trucks. We first covered the startup in 2018 when it shared its T-Log, an autonomous all-electric logging truck.
This was followed by the T-Pod, a similar all-electric driverless truck that began public road testing in Sweden back in 2019, making Einride the first company to accomplish such a feat for commercial purposes.
Since then, Einride has continued to expand the autonomous capabilities of its electric T-Pod trucks with the help of software companies like NVIDIA.
Bridgestone has nearly 100 years of experience as one of the world’s largest rubber and tire suppliers. It has recently shared goals to be 100% carbon neutral and produce tires made from 100% renewable materials by 2050. In the meantime, it looks to reduce its carbon footprint by 50% by 2030.
It is doing so by partnering with other EV automakers like Lightyear. Now Bridgestone has partnered with Einride to combine advanced driving data to increase the safety and efficiency of future commercial fleets.
Einride to deploy electric trucks for Bridgestone on exclusive EV tires
In a press release from Einride, the transport solutions company announced the partnership and the benefits of sharing pertinent EV data with Bridgestone tires.
With this deal, Bridgestone becomes the first partner of Einride in the US and the exclusive tire supplier for its EV trucks in the US market. Niklas Reinedahl, General Manager, Einride North America, spoke to the partnership:
Partnering with Bridgestone is a great match for us both from a commercial and technical standpoint. We have an ambitious business plan for electric and autonomous transportation in the U.S. as well as innovative plans to improve our capabilities by leveraging tire-as-a-sensor technology and insights derived from the tire telematics data.
Einride plans to collect new layers of EV safety and efficiency-related data by using Bridgestone’s smart-sensing tires. In turn, Bridgestone will integrate its advanced mobility technologies into Einride’s existing vehicle platforms.
Furthermore, Einride will supply its electric trucks and digital services to Bridgestone as a subscription agreement for the US, assisting Bridgestone in electrifying a majority of its transport needs by 2025. Nizar Trigui, Chief Technology Officer and Group President, Solutions Businesses, Bridgestone Americas, spoke as well:
We are incredibly excited about this partnership and the opportunity to accelerate our shared goal of creating innovative solutions for fleets while advancing the transformation of Bridgestone into a sustainable solutions company. There is a very high ceiling for innovation within this relationship, including the use of vehicle and tire data and advanced analytics to drive efficiency, safety and low-carbon fleet mobility.
Moving forward, both companies will continue to develop carbon-reducing transportation solutions for Class 8 electric trucks while combining their technologies and data to more quickly electrify commercial fleets globally.
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Author: Scooter Doll
Source: Electrek
