IN Brief:
- Scan Global Logistics and Cycle & Carriage plan a supervised autonomous cargo-vehicle trial on Singapore roads in Q4 2026.
- The electric vehicle has homologation approval, while its proposed route and operating documentation remain under final regulatory review.
- The three-to-six-month trial will use remote monitoring and gather operating data before any wider customer deployment.
Scan Global Logistics and Cycle & Carriage have agreed to trial an electric autonomous cargo vehicle on public roads in Singapore, moving their transport automation programme beyond private-site operation and into supervised road freight.
The partners are targeting the fourth quarter of 2026 for the start of the trial, subject to final approval of the proposed route and operating documentation. The vehicle has already received homologation approval, confirming that it meets the technical, safety, environmental, and regulatory requirements applicable to the programme.
The trial is expected to run for three to six months along a defined route. The vehicle will operate autonomously under supervision, with remote monitoring and procedures allowing a Cycle & Carriage Certified Safety Officer to intervene if required.
Operating data gathered during the programme will be used to assess whether autonomous transport can be extended to additional customers and routes in Singapore. The partners have not yet disclosed the vehicle’s payload, daily journey count, route distance, or charging pattern.
Cycle & Carriage already provides Scan Global Logistics with last-mile distribution to retail stores in Singapore using electric vans. The companies have examined autonomous transport since 2024, giving the road trial an existing commercial and operational setting rather than establishing it as a standalone technology demonstration.
The autonomous vehicle uses sensors, cameras, and software to navigate without a driver physically controlling each movement. Wilfrid Foo, chief executive officer of Cycle & Carriage Group, said successful deployment requires “strong collaboration, operational expertise and a clear understanding of the environment”.
That operating environment changes substantially once an autonomous vehicle leaves a warehouse or logistics compound. Private-site autonomy can use controlled access, fixed routes, restricted traffic, and known loading points. Public-road freight has to interact with conventional vehicles, changing traffic conditions, road infrastructure, regulators, and a much wider range of unexpected events.
Singapore is already hosting activity across both operating models. CEVA Logistics has deployed autonomous electric vehicles inside its multi-storey Blue Hub for pallet and tote transfers between floors. The Scan Global Logistics programme moves the technology into supervised public-road transport.
Remote intervention will be one of the more important measurements during the trial. A vehicle can complete most of a route autonomously and still require an uneconomic level of human support if unusual traffic conditions, loading areas, or other edge cases repeatedly trigger intervention.
The three-to-six-month operating period should also give the partners enough time to assess performance beyond a small number of demonstration journeys. Reliability across repeated freight movements will determine whether the vehicle can be integrated with customer schedules without requiring excessive contingency time or manual support.
Electrification and autonomy create separate operating questions. The electric powertrain can reduce tailpipe emissions whether a vehicle is driven manually or autonomously. Driverless operation must justify its additional technology through vehicle utilisation, labour productivity, safety performance, service reliability, and cost.
Charging will form part of that assessment even though no operating pattern has yet been disclosed. An autonomous freight vehicle still needs sufficient energy availability to meet its route schedule, and charging downtime has to be planned around loading, unloading, and vehicle utilisation.
Scan Global Logistics says the programme will examine efficiency, consistency, and service reliability alongside labour availability and environmental performance. Those measures should reveal whether autonomous operation adds useful transport capacity or simply shifts labour from the cab into monitoring and exception management.
Public-road deployment also places greater emphasis on regulatory approval. Homologation confirms the vehicle itself is acceptable for the proposed application, but route approval governs where and under what conditions the autonomous system can actually operate.
Allan Melgaard, global chief executive officer of Scan Global Logistics, said the objective is to put the technology into a “real logistics environment” and examine how it could fit future services. Wider deployment would therefore follow operating evidence rather than precede it.
The immediate milestone is final approval for the Q4 route. Once commercial cargo begins moving under supervised autonomous conditions, intervention frequency, repeatability, cost, and service performance will provide a clearer measure of whether the system is ready to progress beyond trial operation.
