Aurora Innovation announced during Q4 earnings and in a related letter to shareholders that it will begin making driverless deliveries in April.
“We are on the cusp of our planned commercial launch, a pivotal step toward realizing our mission to deliver the benefits of self-driving technology safely, quickly, and broadly,” said Chris Urmson, co-founder and CEO of Aurora. “In 2025 Aurora will deploy its first driverless trucks on public roads, ushering in a future of safer, more efficient freight transportation and immense value creation.”
The first driverless truck deliveries will haul loads between Dallas and Houston, Texas in April. Aurora uses various metrics to measure readiness to remove the safety driver, one being ARM, which was 99% from 97% at the end of October.
Another is API, an indicator that penalizes the use of on-site support, which is the most extensive support provided to enable the Aurora Driver. Aurora said its goal is to drive up the percentage of commercial load that require no form of on-site support, which would be 100% API.
“We do not anticipate that aggregate API will ever reach 100%, even at launch, because certain situations (e.g., flat tires) will always require on-site support; however, we believe the percentage of 100% API loads is a strong indicator of our progress and expect this metric to reach approximately 90% by commercial launch,” Aurora said in a letter to shareholders.
“We have been approaching 90%, on average, since mid-October. Specific to the fourth quarter, a software issue in the first two weeks dragged the full quarter’s 100% API average down to 79%, but we quickly identified that issue and landed a fix, driving an immediate rebound in performance. Excluding the first two weeks, 88% of fourth quarter loads had a 100% API, with many weeks exceeding our commercial launch estimate of 90%.”
Aurora plans to deploy up to 10 driverless trucks in commercial operations during launch. In the second half of the year it will: expand product capabilities to include validated nighttime and rainy conditions; expand operations to the Fort Worth to El Paso lane, with further extension to Phoenix; and increase capacity to tens of trucks by year-end.
The company claims its testing has shown fuel efficiency improvements of 15% compared to the industry average human driver.
“As we work with customers and more deeply integrate the Aurora Driver with their operations, we see the potential to reduce fuel use and emissions by up to 32%,” the letter said.
In addition to a project hauling commercial loads for DHL, announced last year, Aurora is also working with fleets including FedEx, Werner, Schneider, Hirschbach and Uber Freight.
However, obstacles remain. The FMCSA recently denied an application by Aurora to use a high-visibility flashing lighting system – rather than cones – to alert drivers in the event of a roadside breakdown. The company is hopeful the new administration and its leadership will take a fresh view of the proposal.
“Importantly, this will not impact our driverless truck launch planned for April as we are developing alternative technology solutions and have operational controls that will allow us to comply with the law given our relatively high freight density on this lane; but their denial does a disservice to the broader industry that our warning system stands to benefit,” the company said.
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