Stockholm, Sweden - The world’s largest bearing manufacturer SKF and tech company EInride have signed a pilot agreement to test Einride’s self-driving, electric truck for transporting goods on public roads between SKF’s factories in Gothenburg. 

Einride was the first in the world to drive an electric, self-driving truck on public roads for commercial purposes in 2018. Today, the company offers an intelligent software platform for electric and autonomous shipping and works together with customers like Coca-Cola European Partners, Oatly, Lidl and Electrolux. 

“With the partnership with SKF, we now have customers in all our priority segments: retail, consumer goods, and industrial goods, which we are very proud of. Together with them, we will learn and grow quickly,” says Jonas Hernlund, Chief Commercial Officer at Einride. 

For SKF, autonomous vehicles are nothing new. Today, they use self-driving trucks, so-called AGVs, inside factories and warehouses. There are also far-reaching plans to develop a solution for autonomous loading and unloading of the truck, which can carry up to ten tonnes at a time. However, operating driverless vehicles on public roads requires a special permit from the Swedish Transport Agency, which the two companies plan to apply for together. 

“We want to be proactive and try technology that gives us new opportunities to create efficient and sustainable logistics flows that contribute to our ambitious environmental goals,” says Måns Isacsson, head of SKF’s logistics in Sweden. 

About Einride

Einride is a Swedish transport tech company that develops and provides freight solutions with the help of electric and autonomous vehicles, which leads to the transition to more sustainable and cost-effective transport. The company was founded by Robert Falck, Linnéa Kornehed and Filip Lilja in 2016 and was the first in the world to drive an electric, self-driving truck on public roads for commercial purposes. Today, Einride operates the largest fleet of electric trucks in Europe with large multinational partners, and the company recently set a speed record on the Top Gear track in the UK. For more information visit einride.tech/press or contact press@einride.tech. 

About SKF

SKF’s mission is to be the obvious leader in the bearing market. We do this by offering solutions that reduce friction and CO2 emissions, while increasing the machine’s operating time and performance. Our products and services around the rotary shaft include bearings, seals, lubrication systems, artificial intelligence and wireless condition monitoring. SKF is represented in more than 130 countries and has around 17,000 distributor locations worldwide. In 2020, the company had sales of SEK 74,852 million and the number of employees was 40,963.