Autonomous driving software company Cyngn and Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD plan to release an autonomous electric forklift in 2024.

Cyngn says it has made significant progress adapting its DriveMod technology to enable autonomous forklifts.

Cyngn's DriveMod technology has been adapted for forklifts

Cyngn chief executive Lior Tal says: “Adapting DriveMod to electric forklifts represents a significant milestone in the expansion of Cyngn's portfolio of DriveMod-enabled vehicles to the most universal materials handling vehicle.

“By combining our expertise in autonomous technology with a leading OEM (original equipment maker) like BYD, we can create sustainable, autonomous forklifts capable of tackling the most demanding industrial jobs.”

The DriveMod-enabled forklift, which has a load capacity of 10,000 lb. (4.5 T), uses proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) to detect and analyse pallet dimensions and has the ability to stack multiple units fully autonomously.

BYD vice president of operations Audrey Li welcomes the collaboration and its “potential impact … on organisations’ bottom line”.