WA has been using autonomous heavy vehicles for years. This was the comment a Western Australia local made at an industry conference several years ago during a presentation on autonomous vehicles (AV) and the future. So where are all these mysterious AVs in WA?
The autonomous heavy vehicles are known to be operating on private roads, typically around mine sites, as public road use is not yet legalised. One tried and tested application is the autonomous water trucks operating at Gudai-Darri Mine in the Pilbara region. The trucks are Caterpillar and the mine site is managed by Rio Tinto.
In fact, there are many autonomous vehicles in use on this site which include trains, trucks and drills. Hundreds of Rio Tinto workers control the machinery through a remote operation centre and can view live video feeds, sensor and GPS information of all the equipment.
Fellow WA miner Fortesque runs ‘the Hive’ out of Perth which is an advanced technological centre remotely controlling operations across the Pilbara. The centre oversees more than 200 autonomous haul trucks and moved 4 billion tonnes of iron ore autonomously in 2024.
What’s more, Scania announced in 2024 a contract for 11 autonomous 8×4 tippers to operate out of the Element 25 Butcherbird mine in WA with the fleet deployment noted as the first of many to come.
WA isn’t the only leader in this space; the BHP mine in Goonyella in Queensland hosts 86 retrofitted Komatsu 930E haul truck with autonomous technology. The fleet started operating in 2020 and by late 2023, over 2,000 employees across BHP’s Queensland coal division had undergone training in automation and data-driven processes.
To ensure safety, field offices are employed to keep an eye on the vehicles on site and ensure the survey lines are correct for directing the vehicles the right way. Safety in the site is enhanced by removing the operators from the vehicles whilst doing the heavy work and employees are skilled in new roles in managing the vehicle operations remotely.
According to GlobalData, Australia’s deployment of autonomous haul trucks is second only to China, which as of August 2025 had 2,090 autonomous haul trucks operating across the country. As at July 2025, GlobalData was tracking 3,832 autonomous haul trucks globally, with Australia thought to account for roughly 1,000 of these vehicles.
The WA Government is aware of the opportunities autonomous on-road freight vehicles could have for productivity in the state, which is why it is participating in an iMove project to prepare the state for these vehicles.
The iMove project is intended to enable Transport WA to prepare to engage with industry, based on sound knowledge about the benefits to be achieved by trialling and planning for the commercial deployment of automated on-road freight.
What is special about this project is that WA acknowledge it has a unique opportunity to be a national leader in the AV on-road freight sector.
Whilst this project is a step towards automated freight vehicles being deployed on roads in WA, there is still work to be done around legislation, regulation and no doubt infrastructure in accommodating these vehicles. More information on the progress towards the new Automated Vehicles Safely Law (AVSL) can be found on the infrastructure.gov website.
Nationally, progress in this space is monitored by regular reviews of the National Land Transport Technology Action Plan 2020-2023. This plan has tasked the National Transport Commission (NTC) with developing end-to-end regulation for the commercial deployment of automated vehicles by 2027.
Once regulation is in place, there will still be some challenges to stress test whether our roads and road users are truly ready to accept AV’s and a regulator will need to be established which may take some time. It’s key to stress that no firm date has yet been set in Australia for public AV deployment.
In the meantime, Australian mining operators continue to be well advanced in the deployment on autonomous hauling units, with WA leading the way!