Mo Chen, co-founder of San Diego-based autonomous driving company TuSimple, has started a new company, Hydron, which is committed to developing, manufacturing and selling hydrogen-powered trucks equipped with L4 autonomous driving technology.
Southern California-based Hydron is set to focus on developing, manufacturing and selling hydrogen fuel-cell-powered, autonomous-ready, class-8 trucks and intends to provide hydrogen refueling infrastructure for large fleets and leading carriers in the future.
Chen, a Canadian entrepreneur, co-founded self-driving technology company TuSimple with business partner Xiaodi Hou in 2015.
“The path to commercializing autonomous vehicles requires the complex integration of both hardware and software,” said CEO Chen. “The biggest challenge in bringing autonomous driving to the market at scale is not software development, but access to reliable mass production hardware, and now with Hydron, we will be able to provide automotive-grade hardware specifically for autonomous networks.”
Hydron states that it also plans to collaborate with partners to build a manufacturing facility in North America to better meet the US supply chain challenges. The first generation of Hydron trucks is targeted to enter mass production in Q3 of 2024, including a complete set of sensors, computing units and redundant actuators to meet L4 autonomous driving requirements.