Self-driving truck tech company Plus (formerly Plus.ai) has announced an expansion of its strategic partnership with Full Truck Alliance (FTA).

Through this partnership, the FAW J7+ truck will be available for sale on FTA’s platform, which will give Plus access to a sales channel that handled transactions for over 10 million truckers and five million shippers this year alone. Powered by the Plus automated driving system, the truck is going into mass production in 2021. 

Plus and FTA will collaborate to help shippers in China reduce costs, improve safety and driver comfort, and increase efficiency.

“Our partnership with FTA builds towards a future where automated trucks help create exceptional operational value for the long-haul trucking industry with improved safety, fuel efficiency, uptime and driver comfort,” says Shawn Kerrigan, COO and co-founder of Plus.

“We look forward to bringing these benefits to more fleets around the world.”

The FAW J7+ trucks will be sold directly through FAW’s national sales network. The additional channel via the FTA platform will give the FAW J7+ trucks visibility with millions of registered truck drivers and shippers.

According to Plus, more than a million trucks on the FTA network are replaced each year. Through a similar agreement, FTA previously sold over 20,000 customized new tractors. Plus says that the scale of the FTA network will help drive sales of the FAW J7+ trucks and allow it to accumulate “enormous amounts” of real-world driving miles in diverse scenarios to prove out the safety and reliability of its driving system.

“As a strategic investor in Plus, we have long believed in the team and its ability to execute on being the first to commercialize automated trucks,” says Tianye Miao, senior vice president, Full Truck Alliance.

“We are excited to see mass production of the Plus automated trucking system start in 2021, and to realize our vision of bringing this transformational technology to the millions of truckers and shippers on our platform.”