Marsouto, an autonomous trucking startup, said Wednesday it successfully completed a 3,379-kilometer autonomous freight haul stretching from the western to the eastern United States. The trip marks the world's longest single-route autonomous freight delivery on record.
Marsouto covered the long-haul route from the Port of Long Beach, California, to Hyundai Mobis module plants in Alabama and Georgia in three days. The truck traveled up to 1,300 km per day, demonstrating overwhelming operational efficiency. That figure is approximately 63% higher than the roughly 800 km per day averaged by veteran truck drivers in the U.S.
The run was conducted with a heavy-duty truck loaded with automotive semi-knocked-down kits (CKD) for export at 35 tons, the maximum payload permitted under U.S. federal regulations. Even with the heavy cargo, the vehicle maintained stable high-speed driving at up to 120 km/h, proving the technology's maturity.
Autonomous driving for heavy-duty trucks is technically demanding. It requires sustained situational awareness over long distances, rapid decision-making at high speeds, and precise control calibrated to vehicle size and cargo weight. Repeated lateral oscillations at high speeds, in particular, can damage cargo, requiring specialized know-how.
To address these challenges, Marsouto deployed its proprietary end-to-end (E2E) AI-based autonomous driving system called "MarsPilot." The system integrates perception, judgment and control into a single neural network, enabling preemptive recognition, swift decision-making and precise vehicle control throughout long-haul operations.
"The operational experience we accumulated through domestic regulatory sandboxes in Korea laid the groundwork for our successful transcontinental run in the U.S.," Marsouto CEO Park Il-su said. "We plan to expand our U.S. fleet within the first half of this year and aim to accumulate 100 million km of driving data, continuing to drive middle-mile logistics innovation on highways in both Korea and the United States."