Self-driving truck firm Embark is scouting for U.S. actual property.

The corporate stated Monday it has partnered with actual property funding agency Alterra Property Group to establish areas throughout the Solar Belt that might be utilized as switch factors, at which human drivers might take over for automated techniques that deal with freeway driving. Embark intends to make use of these areas to speed up industrial operations, which it intends to start in 2024.

Alterra focuses on industrial out of doors house, proudly owning greater than 100 properties in 27 states.

The partnership “can present the actual property portfolio, market experience, and capital required to activate a nationwide actual property community of switch factors, enabling Embark to stay asset-light,” Sam Abidi, Embark’s chief industrial officer, stated in a press release.

It is the second such partnership between a self-driving trucking firm and actual property developer unveiled in a month.

In February, TuSimple reached an settlement with Hillwood, a industrial and industrial actual property firm led by Ross Perot Jr., to develop a 1 million-square-foot facility in Fort Price, Texas. The constructing will probably be outfitted to TuSimple’s specs to be an origin-and-destination hub.

As a lot as the 2 partnerships seem related on the floor, they illustrate the distinct go-to-market approaches firms are forging within the autonomous trucking house.

Some firms, corresponding to TuSimple, consider in dock-to-dock operations which might be carried out solely beneath autonomous management, with no people ever concerned within the transportation activity. TuSimple commenced driverless testing between Phoenix and Tucson, Ariz., in late December.

Others, corresponding to Embark, consider that autonomous operations will evolve extra regularly, with self-driving techniques dealing with freeway driving, then pulling over at switch factors so people can slide behind the wheel and drive vehicles on extra difficult floor streets to their remaining locations.

In September, Embark partnered with Ryder to establish as many as 100 areas the place switch hubs would make strategic sense to assist a coast-to-coast community.

Within the close to time period, Embark and Alterra need to discover turnkey websites that require minimal growth prices. Over time, the 2 firms say, they might examine different forms of constructions and additional think about a enterprise mannequin that may permit Alterra to cost for areas on a per-use foundation.

Past the properties already in its portfolio, Alterra says it intends to make the most of as much as $1.5 billion in a discretionary non-public fairness fund to accumulate “dozens” extra websites throughout the U.S. that may be “AV prepared,” together with in main markets corresponding to Los Angeles, Dallas and Atlanta.

Embark and nearly each different self-driving truck firm has eyed early operations throughout a southern swath of the U.S. for each enterprise and operational components. A considerable proportion of the U.S. freight market strikes through Interstate 10, which runs from Los Angeles to Jacksonville, Fla., and sunny and heat climate will probably be extra conducive to the operational thresholds of present self-driving know-how.

“Industrial out of doors storage as an asset class has but to be institutionalized, making it tough for tenants with particular and nationwide actual property wants, like Embark, to systematically entry a community of appropriate websites,” Leo Addimando, managing accomplice of Alterra Property Group, stated within the assertion.

That uncertainty has been one key query mark hanging over Embark and others pursuing a enterprise mannequin primarily based on switch hubs. With commercialization two years away, Embark seems to have taken a step towards fixing that logistical puzzle.