August 7, 2025 - Torc Robotics Opens New Engineering Center

This is the Telemetry Transportation Daily for August 7, 2025 and I'm Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research for Telemetry.

In the still nascent field of automated driving systems, Torc Robotics is one of the oldest companies in existence with an exclusive focus. Torc Robotics was established in 2005 by the Virginia Tech University team that competed in the first DARPA Grand Challenge for automated vehicles. Over the past 20 years, Torc has worked on a variety of projects, including automated systems for Caterpillar mining trucks as well as IED detection vehicles for the military. However, since 2019, it has been an independent subsidiary of Daimler Truck North America and has turned its entire focus to automated long-haul trucking. While Torc remains headquartered in Blacksburg, Virginia near the campus where it was born, the company now has a variety of offices in Oregon, New Mexico, Texas, Quebec and now Ann Arbor, Michigan. 

The Ann Arbor office, which just celebrated its opening, is now the central engineering facility for Torc and already has 140 staff with plans to grow significantly. Ann Arbor was chosen because of access to skilled researchers and engineers from the University of Michigan, Michigan State University and a wide array of suppliers and OEMs. This includes Flex which will be manufacturing the compute platforms for the Freightliner Cascadia trucks that will be equipped with the Torc system. The Ann Arbor office is also about 15 minutes away from the American Center for Mobility, a test facility specifically designed for testing automated and connected vehicle systems. Daimler Truck has already been using ACM for other development work for some time, and Torc will be adding to that presence. 

Later this fall, Torc hopes to start testing its Freightliner Cascadia trucks on public roads around Michigan. Similar trucks are already running in Texas and New Mexico. Torc is targeting its first commercial hub-to-hub deployments on the Dallas to Laredo Texas route in 2027. Torc joins other automated driving system developers, including Waymo and May Mobility, in testing in the greater Ann Arbor area. 

Thanks for listening.