Swedish autonomous-truck startup Einride AB will test its self-driving freight vehicles on public roads in the U.S. in an operation with GE Appliances after getting approval from federal regulators. Einride plans to put one of its chunky electric vehicles, which have no cabs for drivers, on a one-mile stretch of road between two warehouses in Tennessee for GE Appliances, a subsidiary of home appliances company Haier. "This is a step-by-step approach, and this is a major step forward, in that it's actually now on public roads," said Robert Falck, chief executive of the six-year-old Stockholm-based company. Einride is joining a growing field of autonomous-truck startups in the race to get their technology on the road and bringing in revenue. Companies including San Diego-based TuSimple Holdings Inc., Pittsburgh-based Aurora Innovation Inc., and Waymo LLC, a division of Google parent Alphabet Inc., have announced tests of their driverless-truck technology in commercial operations carrying freight.

In the U.S. and other countries, aging populations and growing logistics demand have resulted in shortages of truck drivers. Autonomous trucks could help relieve those shortages. Einride AB today announced that it plans to hire what it called "the first autonomous and remote truck operator in the freight mobility space." The Stockholm-based company said it will hire drivers in Sweden next month, followed by the U.S. in the third quarter. The remote operators would begin commercial services in Sweden in Q3 2020 and in the U.S. in Q4 2020.

Look at just about any rendering or essayistic sketch of the world's transportation future, and you'll notice two things about the cars, trucks, vans, and whatever elses tootling around the roads: They drive themselves and they run on electricity. The funny thing about that pairing is that there's no inherent relationship between a vehicle's ability to drive itself and what it uses to move its wheels. Relying on a battery can actually be problematic for vehicles running piles of computers and sensors, but electric rides are a popular choice for autonomy developers anyway, because they feel more like the future. For Swedish trucking startup Einride, though, the connection between electric and autonomous technology is fundamental. Getting rid of the human, founder and CEO Robert Falck says, makes the formidable challenge of running a truck on batteries far easier.

If a tree falls in a forest and there's nobody around, does the truck that comes in to pick it up make a noise? Not much of one, if it's the latest offering from Swedish startup Einride, an all-electric autonomous semi looking to carve out a niche in an increasingly crowded (but not yet entirely real) market. The new truck, unveiled today at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in the UK, is the T-log. Like on the T-pod, the truck Einride unveiled last year, there's no cab or engine, just a skinny, sculpted, white slab up front. At the back are upright supports to hold the logs in place.