Russia Debuts a Fully Autonomous L5 Freight Hauler — With No Driver Seat in Sight

At Russia’s premier industrial tech forum, a glimpse of the driverless future just rolled onto the stage.

At Digital Industry of Industrial Russia (ЦИПР), Russian tech firm Navio unveiled its most ambitious project yet: an L5 autonomous truck with no steering wheel, no pedals, and—most radically—no driver seat at all. This is not just a truck with autopilot. It’s a truck built only for machines.

Outfitted with a full array of sensors, radars, and machine vision modules, the truck uses aerodynamic intelligence to optimize fuel use, conserving up to 15% compared to human-driven counterparts. The developers claim it can operate 23 hours a day, stopping only for refueling or diagnostics.

Its streamlined cab isn’t just futuristic—it’s functional, designed to minimize drag and completely eliminate any need for human accommodation. And since there’s no cockpit, there’s more space for goods and less risk for humans in dangerous transit zones.

Navio is already putting the prototype through both lab and field tests, with plans for mass production once safety validation is complete. The pitch? Replace costly and inconsistent manual labor with AI precision and near-constant uptime.

But the company isn’t framing this as a job-killer. Instead, it envisions a future where people supervise fleets of smart trucks remotely—becoming operators and engineers rather than long-haul drivers. In an industry plagued by driver shortages and low wages, Navio’s L5 truck might not just be innovation—it could be salvation.