Logistics firm Pitney Bowes will start testing automated short-haul supply vans from startup Gatik underneath a brand new pilot program at Dallas-area distribution facilities, the businesses introduced Wednesday.

Pitney Bowes, which offers logistic companies for retailers together with eBay and American Eagle, will combine Gatik’s self-driving field vans beginning in 2023. The vans will complement 5 present routes within the Dallas-Fort Price space and can run packages between distribution facilities, so-called “middle-mile” supply. 

The partnership provides the worldwide logistics firm entry to a number of the first industrial autonomous supply vans available on the market and provides to Gatik’s rising footprint within the U.S. short-haul supply market.

Gatik, which was based in Silicon Valley in 2017, goals to automate shorter, business-to-business hauls with fastened, repeatable routes. It launched a partnership with Walmart in 2021, turning into the primary industrial supply firm to go fully driverless.

Whereas some autonomous driving methods, reminiscent of Tesla’s, have confronted heightened scrutiny, Gatik says it is navigated the tough setting by limiting its give attention to middle-mile routes.

“By constraining the autonomy downside, we are able to get to the purpose the place the driving force comes out [of the safety driver role] sooner than anybody else within the business,” Gatik’s CEO, Gautam Narang, advised CNBC in an interview. “We selected the most secure doable routes and the simplest doable routes.”

Gatik’s routes don’t cross state traces, and they’re optimized with the assistance of regulators to keep away from faculties, hospitals and unprotected left turns. The vans used are additionally smaller than many the vans of its opponents.

The Pitney Bowes routes could have a security driver to start out, however the firm expects to have the vans fully driverless inside a couple of months. 

At scale, Gatik estimates it might present as much as 30% value financial savings for Pitney Bowes. 

Pitney Bowes has begun a nationwide rollout of automation know-how in its warehouses, and pending the pilot program’s success, a broader rollout of Gatik’s automated supply routes might observe.

The startup raised $85 billion in its Sequence B funding final yr and says it could actually obtain profitability at a site-specific degree, so long as two totally driverless vans are working every route.