Русский
The Kamaz subsidiary road freight carrier Natcar (JSC National Carrier) has tested and is now commercially using cross-border transport using driverless trucks between Russia and Kazakhstan, the company has said. The trucks crossed the border of the two countries autonomously, with the crossing being part of a test run from Moscow to Astana.
Kamaz General Director Sergei Kogogin announced the trial, saying that “The development of driverless transport is one of the current trends in the automotive industry. Kamaz has been developing driverless vehicles for many years and is the only Russian manufacturer of highly automated vehicles based on its own truck chassis today. The introduction of an experimental legal regime on Russian highways gave us the opportunity to launch highly automated Kamaz vehicles and allows us to test our developments on public roads. We are pleased that autonomous logistics, which during this time has confirmed its feasibility and efficiency, is now going international, and we are ready to provide further assistance in developing the project.”
The partnership between Russia and Kazakhstan in transporting goods by highly automated vehicles is logical due to several factors—a land border, an extensive road network, and improved digital connectivity.
Natcar General Director Samat Sattarov said, “Logistics is a global living organism, and limiting its development to the borders of a single country is simply unpromising. I am confident that international projects and cooperation of this scale can bring driverless freight transportation to a fundamentally new level of service and technology.”
Natcar is one of the main operators of highly automated vehicles (HAVs) and was created by Kamaz based on the KAMAZ-54901. Its fleet includes eighteen 54901s, transporting goods along the country’s major highways: the M-11 Neva, the Central Ring Road (A-113), and the M-12 Vostok. The company will continue to test new destinations for its unmanned vehicles in order to establish a strong presence in the international transport market, including services to China.
