Daimler Trucks has bought a majority stake in self-driving technology group Torc Robotics, the first European takeover of a leading US company in the sector…

The move by the world’s largest producer of commercial vehicles follows its January pledge to spend €500m on accelerating its development of autonomous technology. Mr Daum said the ultimate goal was for trucks to drive on highways without the need “for a driver to be in the cabin at all”…

Though less well known than some rivals, the company shares its history with many of them. Torc was spun out of the Virginia Tech university team that entered the 2004 Darpa Grand Challenge, the driverless car contest sponsored by the US defence department that also spawned Google’s self-driving unit Waymo as well as autonomous projects at Uber, Aurora Innovation and Pronto AI.
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