Self-driving truck startup PlusAI hits new safety milestones ahead of 2027 launch
Three readiness measures are all moving in the right direction, and the company says driverless commercial trucks are a 2027 target, not a distant dream.
Key points
- PlusAI released its commercial readiness figures for the first half of 2026, showing progress across all three safety metrics it tracks publicly.
- The company's safety case readiness score rose from 90.1% to 93.4% between late 2025 and mid-2026.
- PlusAI is targeting factory-built autonomous trucks at commercial scale in 2027.
- In the first half of 2026, PlusAI ran freight trials with International and Ryder on a Texas highway and announced the first autonomous trucks in Southern Europe.
- SuperDrive 6.0 added night-driving and construction-zone handling.
A Santa Clara, California startup says its self-driving trucks are getting measurably closer to the road, and it's got the numbers to back that up.
PlusAI, founded in 2016, builds software called SuperDrive that drives large commercial trucks without a human behind the wheel. The company released its commercial readiness figures for the first half of 2026 yesterday, as first reported by The Robot Report. The figures show, milestone by milestone, how close the technology is to everyday freight runs.
What do the numbers actually mean?
Three scores tell the story. Think of them as gauges on a dashboard, each measuring a different piece of readiness.
| Metric | What it measures | Late 2025 | Mid-2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Safety Case Readiness (SCR) | Engineering evidence that the system is safe to deploy | 90.1% | 93.4% |
| Autonomous Miles Percentage (AMP) | Share of miles driven by the software, not a human | 99.2% | 99.8% |
| Remote Assistance-Free Trips (RAFT) | Trips completed without a remote operator stepping in | 79% | 85.2% |
PlusAI wants SCR at 100% and RAFT above 90% before trucks start delivering freight commercially. Both targets are set for 2027.
The AMP figure is particularly striking. At 99.8%, the software is steering for nearly every mile driven during trials, leaving almost nothing for a human backup driver to do.
What has PlusAI actually been doing out on the road?
The numbers are backed by real-world activity. In the first half of 2026, PlusAI launched a commercial fleet trial with truck maker International and logistics company Ryder, running loads along Interstate 35 in Texas, one of the busiest freight corridors in the country.
It also announced the first autonomous trucks in Southern Europe, working with Spanish logistics firm Sesé and the regional government of Aragon.
SuperDrive 6.0 arrived with two additions that matter for full commercial use: night driving and construction-zone handling, both situations that have tripped up self-driving systems for years. PlusAI also deepened its partnership with NVIDIA, using NVIDIA's Alpamayo foundation model, a large AI system trained to handle complex driving decisions, alongside NVIDIA's safety tools. We covered NVIDIA's broader push into robotics on 19 July 2026, when the chip maker announced Cosmos 3 Edge and pulled in Japanese industrial partners.
Should truckers and freight companies pay attention?
Yes, though 2027 is still more than a year away and these remain trial runs, not open-road freight.
Self-driving timelines have slipped before across the whole industry. PlusAI is making steady, documented progress, but the gap between 93% safety case readiness and 100% can hide a lot of hard engineering work. Upfront integration costs are real and largely unpublished.
For truck drivers, a fully driverless commercial fleet is still a 2027-and-beyond story. Remote monitoring roles and fleet management jobs are likely to grow before driving roles shrink. The Avatar Robotics model we reported on 7 August, where humans operate machines today while AI learns from them, shows one way that transition tends to unfold in practice.
If you work in logistics or freight, start asking suppliers and partners what their autonomous vehicle strategy looks like. The trucks aren't here yet, but the companies buying them are making decisions now.
