class-8-trucks
(3)
Mars Auto
Mars Auto is a South Korean AI company building self-driving Class 8 trucks for long-haul freight. Founded in 2017 by KAIST computer scientists Ilsu Park and Gyuri Im, it uses a vision-only, end-to-end AI driving agent - seven cameras and a single neural network, with no LiDAR and no HD maps - that can be retrofitted onto existing trucks. Mars Auto ran the first commercial long-haul autonomous freight in Korea in 2023 and began paid U.S. operations from a Texas base in 2024, aiming to deploy fully unmanned trucks by 2028.
Ilsu Park
Ilsu Park is the co-founder and CEO of Mars Auto, a Seoul-based startup building camera-based, map-free self-driving software for heavy trucks. A KAIST computer science graduate and self-taught deep-learning engineer, he started with a hobby project that used a driving-game simulator to train a neural network, then turned that idea into a company that runs paid autonomous freight in Korea and the United States. Mars Auto takes a Tesla-style vision-first approach, skipping LiDAR and HD maps to cut the cost of automating a Class 8 truck to roughly $7,000 per unit. Park has raised about $12 million, graduated from Y Combinator, and made the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list. He is targeting fully driverless long-haul freight by 2028.
Verne
Verne is a San Francisco climate-tech company building high-density cryo-compressed hydrogen (CcH2) storage and power systems. Founded in 2020 by Stanford and UC-Berkeley alumni, Verne developed a method to store hydrogen at up to 73 g/L - roughly 33% denser than liquid hydrogen and 87% denser than 700-bar compressed gas - without the cost of full liquefaction. After proving the technology on the world's first CcH2-powered Class 8 truck in 2024, Verne has expanded into turnkey zero-emission on-site power, targeting data centers, ports, construction sites and EV charging with modular hydrogen-to-power systems.