Before the pandemic accelerated the shift to buying goods online, trucks were already moving nearly 12 billion tons of freight a year. Trucking is the backbone of the American economy, and we’re building the Aurora Driver to make the industry safer, faster, more reliable, and more efficient. Today, it takes almost three days for a truck to deliver goods from Dallas to Los Angeles. When it’s deployed on this route, we expect the Aurora Driver to make the 1500-mile trip in less than 24 hours.
Over the past several years, we’ve laid the foundation to deliver the Aurora Driver by building partnerships with truck manufacturers and making rapid progress on our next-generation technology. Now, we’re expanding deployment with shippers and carriers as we refine our Driver and fit its operations to their needs. Over the next year, expect to see more autonomous trucks with the Aurora Driver on Texas roads as we engage with key logistics companies in commercial pilots.
Our initial routes will originate out of the Texas Triangle, outlined above, one of the busiest logistics corridors in the country.
Our first commercial pilots will move goods for shippers and carriers on several key “middle-mile” routes in Texas, which moves more freight by trucks than any other state. The Aurora Driver will operate autonomously with a safety driver between transfer hubs, or “terminals,” to enable us to efficiently consolidate loads from multiple sources. For shippers and carriers with existing hubs and large volumes of freight, we expect to ultimately drive the complete route with no need for an intermediate consolidation point.
As the biggest state in the “lower 48,” Texas’ middle-mile routes are lengthy. To quickly develop HD maps of this magnitude, we refined our Aurora Atlas tooling and doubled our production rates. Our strong mapping foundation in Texas helps us rapidly and seamlessly add routes as we improve our technology and expand services throughout the Southwest corridor.
In Dallas, our team and trucks operate nearly 24/7 to test and advance the Aurora Driver’s capabilities by collecting data to accelerate development and pulling loads for early customers. By implementing multiple testing shifts, our truck operators are now fine-tuning highway capabilities on the road even more efficiently. Their live feedback is incorporated into our Virtual Testing Suite, where our simulation technology is “driving” the equivalent of more than 10,000 action-packed trips from Dallas to Houston every day.
Wait for it… Above, the Aurora Driver expertly slows down to let a car pass us on the right before safely changing lanes to make an upcoming exit. These are the types of subtleties that our Truck Operators help us refine on the road.
In less than a year, we outgrew our first office in Dallas, and we’ll be moving into a second, larger office to accommodate our expanding team and testing fleet. Over the next year, we’ll continue to mobilize and recruit passionate autonomous operations specialists, service engineers, hardware and software engineers to join us in making trucking safer and more efficient than ever before. To use a local phrase, we’re moving faster than a prairie fire with a tailwind, and look forward to sharing more exciting updates soon.
This month we’re profiling Daniela Landey who joined Aurora as a Vehicle Operator and gained on-the-job technical skills to transition into her current role as a Motion Planning Operations Specialist.
This month we’re profiling VP of People Tara Green who focuses on developing Aurora’s leaders and building expert teams committed to delivering self-driving technology to market.
Meet Audrey Wooding, a Program Manager from our Lidar R&D team, who co-leads Aurora’s women’s resource group and co-founded our company’s first returnship program.