On 12 January 2025, Iveco and PlusAI announced the start of trials of Level 4 autonomous driving for industrial vehicles, to be carried out in Spain in collaboration with Spanish logistics operator Sesé and the Government of Aragon. The vehicles will travel a distance of around 300 kilometres between Madrid and Zaragoza, one of Spain’s busiest transport corridors. The programme involves the development of two Iveco S-Way tractor units equipped with PlusAI’s Superdrive autonomous driving system.
Throughout the multi-year trial period, the vehicles will operate with a safety operator on board, following a gradual approach designed to validate the technologies under real operating conditions. The aim is to assess the reliability of advanced automation systems on long-haul routes, evaluating their impact on road safety, service continuity and the sustainability of freight transport.
The project forms part of a long-standing collaboration between the two companies, which in recent years has already led to the development and testing of advanced driver assistance solutions and Level 2+ and Level 4 automation systems. Spain was selected thanks to its well-established motorway infrastructure and the support of local institutions, which are keen to promote innovation in logistics and freight transport.
The announcement also comes at a sensitive moment for PlusAI, as the company prepares for a stock market listing through a business combination with Churchill Capital Corp Ix, a transaction expected to close in the first quarter of 2026. Once completed, the company will continue to operate under the name PlusAI and will be listed on Nasdaq under the ticker Pls, strengthening its financial position ahead of the planned commercial launch of its autonomous solutions in 2027.
The start of the Spanish trials represents the latest step in a sequence of initiatives that, throughout 2025 and into early 2026, have marked PlusAI’s industrial and technological growth. Between January and March 2025, the company announced a collaboration with Tier IV to accelerate the development of next-generation autonomous driving solutions in Japan, with a focus on Level 4 trucks for motorway operations. The initiative addresses the growing driver shortage in the Japanese freight transport market, making automation a key factor in maintaining supply chain resilience.
At the end of April 2025, during the Advanced Clean Transportation Expo in Anaheim, PlusAI announced the successful completion of fully autonomous technology validation tests, carried out without a driver on board on a high-speed closed circuit. The trials demonstrated the Superdrive system’s ability to manage advanced safety manoeuvres without human intervention or remote support, a milestone considered crucial on the path towards full autonomy.
On 5 June 2025, the definitive merger agreement with Churchill Capital Corp Ix was announced. The transaction assigns PlusAI a pre-money valuation of USD 1.2 billion (around EUR 1.1 billion) and is expected to secure up to USD 300 million in gross proceeds, resources considered sufficient to fund the company through to the start of commercial operations in 2027. The prospect of the listing has helped to raise the company’s industrial profile.
During the summer of 2025, PlusAI published its key commercial readiness indicators for the first time. In the first half of the year, Safety Case Readiness reached 86%, Autonomous Miles Percentage 98% and Remote Assistance Free Trips 76%, improving on the second half of 2024 figures of 75%, 97% and 69% respectively. In the same period, a collaboration with Goodyear was announced to integrate its Sightline intelligent tyre technology into the Superdrive system, providing real-time information on tyre conditions and road surfaces.
In September 2025, trials also began with commercial fleets of second-generation autonomous trucks in the United States, along the Interstate 35 corridor between Laredo and Dallas, Texas, in collaboration with International Motors. The activities, coordinated by the San Antonio autonomous hub, involve selected operators and are considered an intermediate step towards fully autonomous operations planned for 2027.
In early January 2026, PlusAI released an update on its commercial readiness metrics for the second half of 2025. Safety Case Readiness rose to 90.1%, Autonomous Miles Percentage to 99.2% and Remote Assistance Free Trips to 79%, with improvements of around 20 percentage points for the first metric and 19 points for the third over a two-year period.
M.L.
