A friendly text arrived out of the blue on Thursday morning, and it carried bad news for PlusAI.
The sender had spotted two of the company’s trucks parked near their workplace, in Newark, California. That was wrong twice over: the vehicles belonged to a self-driving truck developer, and they were supposed to be sitting outside its warehouse half a mile away.
Within hours, police were helping recover the pair, both carrying the logos of PlusAI and Nvidia, its partner on autonomous truck software. Whoever hooked up their own cabs, broke the hand locks and opened the doors then walked away.
The reason is simple enough. Roughly 20,000 pounds of sand sat inside each trailer.
The sand was no accident. Trailers at the company are weighed down with simulated ballast as part of a testing program, spokesperson Lauren Kwan said.
Both vehicles came back with their 40,000 pounds intact. The tech-enabled cabs, where a driver normally sits, never left the warehouse.
Fremont Police say an investigation is open with no arrests so far. The episode fits a broader wave of cargo crime aimed at expensive computing hardware. Two California incidents in August involved thieves striking security escort vehicles that follow high-value tech loads, and Tesla batteries and bitcoin mining rigs have been taken this year. Analytics firm Verisk CargoNet lists metals and enterprise-grade computing equipment among recent favorites.
By Thursday afternoon, the sand was home.
