The Impossible Gap: Autonomous trucks enable death-defying Red Bull stunt

The entire feat lasted only 10 seconds — two seconds less than the Wright brothers’ first flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Making those 10 seconds of history required months of training and testing.

First, they needed someone crazy enough to try it. Jones had already built his reputation with stunts like Red Bull’s Frames of Mind, in which he rode a woodland course that included a Hot Wheels-style loop, and “The House Jump,” in which he cleared his own home (and chimney) off a 3.5-meter-tall ramp at 43 mph before dropping 7 meters to land.

Jones’ concept began, as many great ideas do, on a napkin — the same way Jeff Bezos sketched Amazon’s flywheel in the early 2000s. Instead of e-commerce dominance, Jones drew two tractor-trailers passing each other with a biker flying between them.

There was zero margin for error. Fortunately, Scania’s autonomous trucks, equipped with LiDAR and radar, delivered the required precision for the 8-meter gap.

“The concept of autonomous trucks was very new to me. It kind of made me nervous at first because I didn’t really understand it. The more we thought about it, the more we realized this project actually lives or dies on autonomy — it has to be so perfect and so precise,” Jones said.

Months of rehearsals followed in the U.K. and Sweden. The trucks not only had to synchronize perfectly with each other but also adapt in real time to the speed of Jones’ Audi tow vehicle.

Scania has been developing autonomous technology since 2018, when its cabless mining trucks began operating in Rio Tinto’s Australian mines. For this stunt, however, a cabbed truck was required — and Silicon Valley-based Plus provided its SuperDrive virtual driver.

Plus noted: “The challenge required repeatable, sub-decimeter path holding, reliable sensing in dynamic conditions, and real-time prediction to maintain safe and consistent behavior across every rehearsal run.”

This is the same Plus SuperDrive system currently being validated with OEM partners for factory-installed autonomous trucks targeted for 2027.

For the autonomous trucking industry, the stunt showcased superhuman precision and timing. For everyday motorists, the takeaway is that these systems are designed to create larger — not smaller — windows of safety on public roads.

Scania’s head of autonomous solutions, Peter Hafmar, summed it up: “Thanks to our autonomous trucks, we could create the exact window of opportunity Matt needed. Seeing firsthand the precision and safety our technology delivered fills us with immense pride.”

Caveat to all riders: Do not attempt to jump between moving tractor-trailers under any circumstances, autonomous or otherwise. This stunt was performed on a closed course with extensive safety protocols.