T2 autonomous trucks to self-drive hub-to-highway from 2027年1月

T2's announcement is about the ungainly middle mile of autonomous trucking: the stretch where a truck leaves a hub, threads general roads and toll gates, and merges onto an expressway. The company says it designed the vehicle's path to the centimeter in hub areas, keeping at least 1m of clearance from road edges and structures to account for the inner-wheel offset of large trucks, and it uses onboard sensors to recognize pedestrians and bicycles up to 60m ahead and follow or stop for them. In September it ran two routes, one from トランスゲート綾瀬 near the Ayase smart interchange on the Tomei Expressway onto the expressway via general roads and a toll gate, and one from the toll gate at the Nishinomiya-Kita interchange on the Chugoku Expressway via general roads to トランスゲート西宮北; both succeeded at Level 2. T2 says this is the first case in Japan of a trucking operator developing and implementing hub departure/arrival tech outside expressways.

The near-term work is about making unmanned operation practical. T2 demonstrated issuing a departure command from a smartphone through a web app it built, and it envisions hub workers sending off a driverless truck once the driver has left the cab, which fits its goal of Level 4 trunk-line transport from fiscal 2027 or later. It currently serves about 30 companies on Kanto–Kansai commercial transport, and it hauled real cargo on 福山通運 runs on October 19 and 20 before the new tech goes into service.

What remains on T2's list is contingency handling: developing ways to move a vehicle to a safe spot when it breaks down or weather turns suddenly, and adding a feature to the web app for checking other trucks' operating status. Those items suggest the company sees the hub-to-highway leg as one piece of a larger unmanned operating setup rather than a standalone trick.