This week marked an historic occasion for the UD Trucks brand internationally.
Now part of the Isuzu Group, UD Trucks entered into a distribution agreement with Isuzu East Africa in Kenya — a first for the two storied Japanese truckmakers.
It makes Isuzu East Africa the first Group company to handle both Isuzu and UD Trucks branded vehicles.
Isuzu Group said it would leverage its technology and development capabilities, global sales and aftersales network, and brand presence to provide attractive products to a broader customer base, as its transformation into a commercial mobility solutions company would “addresses the challenges facing society”.
In November last year, Isuzu Motors commenced driving tests using heavy-duty trucks, along with UD, Hino Motors and Fuso Truck & Bus Corporation, with automated driving technology on the Shin-Tomei Expressway between Tokyo and Nagoya.
To help solve the ongoing issues of driver shortages, the four companies, which are the contractors for the project, together with four manufacturers, logistics companies, and other related parties, are aiming for the implementation of autonomous driving trucks on the expressway from 2026 onward through a joint public-private effort.
To date, the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Tourism (MLIT) have conducted what is dubbed “Demonstrations for Social Implementation of Truck Platooning”, a demonstration of the technology used for truck platooning without drivers.
The ongoing initiative, which recommenced in 2021 and will be completed later this year, aims to achieve independent driverless truck movements between relay areas such as logistics facilities, service areas, and parking areas around expressways and verifies support from external infrastructure equipment, operations such as monitoring and management, and vehicle functions necessary for such operations.
Based on the evaluation results of these demonstration tests, in fiscal 2025, the final year of the project, “we plan to verify the process from vehicle departure at a service area to merging and changing lanes on the main line and parking at the destination under conditions closer to those of actual driving,” Isuzu Motors said in a statement.
“In addition, we plan to conduct demonstration experiments utilising priority lanes for autonomous driving vehicles, which is one of the Early Harvest Projects ‘Setting up CAV (Connected Autonomous Vehicles) corridors’ under the ‘Digital Lifeline Development Plan’ led by METI.”
