Ten of TuSimple’s autonomous large rigs are set to be auctioned off later this month, just some weeks after the self-driving trucking startup that went public in 2021 announced it was exiting the U.S. market.
The vehicles, together with a slew of analysis and growth tools and workplace provides, shall be bought off in two on-line auctions. The first is slated to run January 23-25, and a second is scheduled for February 6-8. A spokesperson for the public sale firm confirmed 10 vehicles will “initially” be bought. TuSimple, which had an workplace in San Diego and an operations facility in Tucson, Arizona, reported in November that it had 35 autonomous vehicles in the US. It’s unclear what’s going to occur to the opposite 25.
TuSimple’s fall from high-flying startup standing to being touted as an “Incredible Offer!!” in a web-based public sale is an indication of simply how treacherous the highway has grow to be for AV startups.
Embark Applied sciences bought itself (and in addition auctioned off some vehicles) in 2023, simply two years after going public in a transaction that valued the company at more than $5 billion. Argo AI shut down in late 2022 regardless of having large backers in Ford and Volkswagen. Cruise paused operations, slashed its workforce and pushed out quite a lot of executives after one in all its AVs was concerned in a crash late last year.
Based in 2015, TuSimple was one of many earlier gamers that attempted to skip straight to creating absolutely driverless vehicles for transferring items across the nation. It even received a quick contract in 2019 to run mail for the U.S. Postal Service between its Phoenix and Dallas distribution centers.
Although it typically positioned itself as an American startup, TuSimple’s founders and funding originated from China. The corporate went public in 2021 and was swiftly scrutinized by the Committee on Overseas Funding in the US over its Chinese language shareholders. It in the end wound up below investigation by both the FBI and the Securities and Exchange Commission, and subsequently misplaced an important deal to co-develop self-driving large rigs with trucking giant Navistar in late 2022. Since then, the corporate’s share value has continued to fall from a excessive in July 2021 of $62.58 to only $0.73 at present.
TuSimple spent a lot of 2023 altering its priorities, saying at one level that it will unload its China enterprise earlier than reversing course and asserting it needed to unload the U.S. operation. In December, the corporate stated it will exit the U.S. altogether and laid off greater than 150 employees consequently.
