Autonomous vehicle company Kodiak Robotics announced an upfit partner for its autonomous trucks: Roush Industries will upfit trucks in its Livonia, Michigan, facility to support Kodiak’s autonomous vehicle hardware.
The companies will work together to scale upfitting of autonomous trucks equipped with the Kodiak Driver, Kodiak's advanced AI-powered autonomous solution.
In collaboration with Kodiak, Roush has committed to open a production line for scaled upfitting of trucks equipped with the Kodiak Driver's modular and vehicle-agnostic hardware. This hardware includes Kodiak's proprietary SensorPods, AI compute, Actuation Control Engine safety compute, and redundant actuation elements. Roush has also committed to design, develop, and implement a flexible manufacturing process that can rapidly scale as Kodiak increases its upfit of Kodiak Driver-powered trucks to meet customer demand.
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Starting in the second half of 2025, the first trucks Roush will upfit are expected to be for Kodiak's customer, Atlas Energy Solutions, as Kodiak and Atlas work to expand the driverless operations they began in December 2024.
"Kodiak's autonomous trucking technology is an exciting advancement in the mobility industry," Brad Rzetelny, VP of contract manufacturing for Roush, said. "Together we're working to build a robust and repeatable manufacturing process that supports Kodiak's transition from limited production to full-scale deployment. Kodiak's technology and engineering rigor set a high bar, and we believe we are uniquely positioned to meet that bar at scale."
"We believe that Roush's strong quality management processes will ensure our customers' Kodiak Driver-powered trucks will be built to exacting standards while giving us the manufacturing flexibility to support a wide range of vehicle configurations, including different vehicle and cab types, axle setups, and heavy-duty applications to meet the diverse demands of the trucking industry,” Don Burnette, founder and CEO of Kodiak, said. “Unlike traditional factory-line integration, which is limited to a single configuration, we believe that working with Roush will allow us to move faster and customize vehicles to meet customer needs."
