Truck platooning technology needs to prove its worth soon

When a major industry player pours cold water on an emerging technology, it should come as little surprise when enthusiasm for that idea diminishes across the board. So it was with platooning: it has been two years since Daimler Trucks announced that tests in ideal conditions had failed to deliver meaningful emissions reductions, leaving the world’s largest truckmaker with no business case to fit the technology to vehicles. Instead, it announced it would plough ahead with the development of a high-level autonomous system, an ambition it appeared to double down on last year following its tie up with Waymo.