A self-driving-vehicle technology company is setting up shop at Hillwood’s AllianceTexas in north Fort Worth.
Virginia-based Torc Robotics Inc. announced Jan. 7 it will open a 22,000-square-foot office at 13119 Old Denton Road to test autonomous trucks and customer freight pilots and commercialization efforts targeted in 2027. Torc is a subsidiary of German vehicle giant Daimler Truck AG, part of Mercedes-Benz Group. Torc has leased the space and plans to build the new facility during the first half of this year.
The 17-acre site will feature a customer experience center, offices and control centers for fleet management and operations. Executives at Torc cite the central location as one reason for the office location, with major interstate routes leading to trade hubs such as Laredo. Laredo is the largest economic port of entry in the country, seeing $320 billion in trade in 2023, according to the Laredo Economic Development Corp.
“This new hub will enable us to better serve our current and future customers, enhance our operational capabilities, and drive forward the adoption of autonomous technology in the logistics industry,” Torc CEO Peter Vaughan Schmidt said in a statement. “As we work toward commercialization, the new hub will give us access to talent, resources and routes that we didn’t previously have, and we’re excited about the growth opportunities ahead.”
Dallas-Fort Worth is known as a hub for transportation innovation and AllianceTexas has become a hub of autonomous vehicle activity. Startup TuSimple operated an autonomous trucking hub in Alliance although it has since pivoted to AI gaming technology. Autonomous box car company Gatik, which works with grocers such as Kroger, operates in Alliance.
Ian Kinne, director of logistics innovation at Hillwood, said long highway routes to major destinations, state policy that’s friendly to testing and operating the technology and good weather are all factors that attract autonomous vehicle companies to the area. Many companies test technology at the Alliance Mobility Innovation Zone.
“Our goal is not to just to be a place where technology companies come, but also a place where our customers feel encouraged to deploy some of their maybe more challenging technologies that they think could be transformational to their business,” Kinne said. “And so by having groups like Torc here, we think that further enables a lot of our customers to not just introduce technology for technology sake, but to build reliability and resiliency into their supply chain models.”
Torc also plans to expand in Ann Arbor, Michigan and hire more than 100 positions. The company has engineering offices in Austin and Montreal.
