A European success story: how Einride is transforming global logistics
Swedish technology company Einride not only offers a European AV solution to global logistics, but also may ease Europe’s severe driver shortage - currently over 500,000 unfilled roles.
Einride - a Swedish company whose name stems from the Old Norse Einriði ("the one who rides alone") - is revolutionising the global logistics sector with a distinctly European focus on electric vehicles, efficiency, and safety.
Einride (NASDAQ: ENRD) might also very well offer an innovative solution that aligns with the EU’s priorities to enhance automation across the industry, while also helping to manage the shortage of truck drivers in Europe, which is currently estimated to be over 500,000 drivers.
Founded in 2016, the company provides autonomous electric trucks alongside end-to-end management covering drivers, routing, vehicle fleets, and charging infrastructure, all powered by its proprietary Saga AI operating system.
As European regulators become increasingly open to autonomous vehicles, we sat down with Henrik Green - Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and General Manager of Autonomous Technologies at Enride - to discuss the company’s experience in Europe and abroad and future plans.
Start in the Nordics, Belgium, and Germany, already present in the US
Recently, Einride announced a cooperation with German giant LIDL to operate autonomous trucks on German public roads, and later announced a strategic collaboration with NVIDIA to accelerate Einride’s push into highway and suburban autonomous trucking.
In the words of Einride’s Henrik Green, the company is focused on global growth, and the German announcement was preceded by public road permits in Sweden, Belgium, and Norway:
“Strategically, for us, we are targeting Europe, the US, and the Middle East. And speaking of Europe, we have now operated and driven with public road permits, completely driverless, heavy-duty autonomous trucks on the road in Sweden, Belgium, and Norway before. Northern Europe is our first stepping stone to larger Europe, and Germany was, of course, a very large and significant step for us because of the market size and high level of industrialization that you see across Germany”.
Einride’s technology to power autonomous trucks is already present in the United States - including the states of Tennessee, Ohio, Texas, and South Carolina.
European regulators are increasingly leaning forward
According to Einride’s CTO, the differences at the national level of legislation that the company has to comply with is still fragmented across Europe, however, countries are increasingly leaning forward and actually helping the company to achieve the public road permits for heavy trucks - such as Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Germany, and forward leaning process in the Netherlands.
Although the preparatory work for Einride to launch autonomous trucks on public roads - such as creating a rigorous security and safety structure - took years to engineer, the permit process took less:
“We have been working very rigorously with the German regulators, and prior to that we worked with corresponding institutions in Sweden. In terms of preparation and engineering, it definitely took years, but the actual permit process took months”.
Severe shortage of truck drivers solved through technology
In the EU, around 77% of inland freight is transported by road, and the trend is moving upwards - according to the European Commission’s data, in 2025, the amount of goods transported by road increased by 1,8% compared with 2024.
Per data from the International Road Transport Union, Europe currently has 502,000 unfilled truck driver positions, and around 660,500 drivers are expected to retire by 2030.
Einride’s solution can theoretically lower the required number of truck drivers in Einride's autonomous trucks, which are already operating in Sweden, the United States, and Germany, and are completely autonomous, without drivers on board. Einride uses control towers with human operators that monitor a fleet of vehicles and assist when anomalies or issues arise - such as thunderstorms, police evacuations - and when human oversight is needed. As highlighted by Einride’s CTO:
“Typically, we have two to four trucks at one site, and we can use one human per shift to monitor the trucks, and that’s the reduction of labor cost if you will.”