(Yicai Global) July 16 -- China's self-driving car startup TuSimple and US truck manufacturer Navistar International will cooperate to jointly develop Level 4 autonomous trucks and achieve mass production by 2024, TuSimple said in a statement on its website yesterday.

San Diego-based TuSimple has maintained technical cooperation with Illinois-headquartered Navistar for more than two years since it secured investment from it in 2017, according to corporate information platform Tianyancha.

Their partnership is the most in-depth between start-up driverless companies and original equipment manufacturers, and also the only one on L4 driverless trucks.

“Navistar’s strategic partnership with TuSimple positions us to be a leader in developing solutions for our customers by leveraging our organizations’ collective expertise to integrate our vehicle design and systems integration capabilities with TuSimple’s innovative autonomous technology,” Persio Lisboa,Navistar's chief executive, said in a press release announcing the deal.

TuSimple was founded in 2015 in Beijing, China and San Diego, US, and then expanded to Shanghai, Hebei and Arizona, setting up research and development and application centers in these five locations.

The company has a fleet of more than 50 autonomous trucks and serves 18 customers including United Parcel Service and wholesale supply chain services firm McLane. It will cooperate with UPS, Penske Truck Leasing, US Xpress and McLane to introduce the world's first autonomous freight network in the US, it announced on July 1.

Level 4 is deemed to be fully autonomous driving, though a human driver can still take control and the vehicle has a driver’s compartment. A car at this level can manage most driving scenarios and even extremely complicated urban driving without driver input.

Editor: Ben Armour