Why Aurora Put Drivers Back Behind the Wheel of Its Autonomous Trucks – Equipment

Autonomous trucks have been in the news quite a bit lately, indicating impressive progress being made by developers of this cutting-edge, transformative technology.

Reading between the lines, a logical conclusion is that we are drawing very near to seeing driverless trucks enter into real-world fleet operations.

A major announcement from Aurora was part of that uptick in autonomous news.

On May 1, Aurora announced that its autonomous trucks were delivering freight in Texas without a human safety driver positioned behind the steering wheel. (An observer was riding in the truck’s sleeper, however.)

A Sudden Reversal

But on May 20, Aurora suddenly reversed course on this move. The OEM announced that at the request of Paccar – its OEM partner in these “driver out” test runs – it would once again operate the trucks with a human driver behind the wheel.

The news broke via a blog post by Chris Urmson, Aurora’s CEO, which read:

When we launched our driverless trucking service last month, it was a moment guided by safety and underpinned by rigorous testing, painstaking validation, and a deep commitment to our mission. A core part of our strategy has always been building a strong ecosystem of partners across the industry — from OEMs to logistics providers to regulators. These partnerships are essential to delivering a safe, scalable, commercial product.

One of those partners, Paccar, requested we have a person in the driver’s seat, because of certain prototype parts in their base vehicle platform. We are confident this is not required to operate the truck safely based on the exhaustive testing (covering nearly 10,000 requirements and 2.7 million tests) and analysis that populates our safety case. Paccar is a long-time partner and, after much consideration, we respected their request and are moving the observer, who had been riding in the back of some of our trips, from the back seat to the front seat. 

This observer will not operate the vehicle — the Aurora Driver will continue to be fully responsible for all driving tasks, including pulling over to a safe location if required. And we’ve shown we can do that safely, with the Aurora Driver operating for more than 6,000 driverless miles along our commercial launch lane between Dallas and Houston. This change has no impact on our near, mid and long-term development plans.

Our partnerships are critical to our long term strategy. We’re confident in the technology, grateful for our partners, and excited about the driverless road we’re on.

On Track for Autonomous Tech

So, was this move a setback for autonomous technology? Or just an extension of the extreme caution autonomous developers have been exercising for the past decade?

HDT reached out to Aurora for some context.

According to an Aurora spokesperson, the decision to put a driver back behind the wheel of the autonomous trucks in Texas “has no impact on our near-, mid- and long-term development plans.”

Additionally, the spokesperson said the move was not due to safety concerns or any recently discovered technical issues.

The spokesperson pointed to a recent statement from Paccar on its ongoing work with Aurora from Paul Konasewich, general manager, Paccar Innovation Center:

“We’re building this very strong foundation that’s going to scale nicely. That is the whole point, really. We’re not here to do 100 or even a thousand [autonomous] trucks. The whole point is to produce as many of these as customers like [Werner] can use.”

“Aurora is continuing to work with both of its OEM partners (Paccar and Volvo) on delivering trucks at scale in the years to come,” the spokesperson added. 

“As we’ve said before, we expect to be cash flow positive and a self-funded company, anticipated in 2028,” the spokesperson said. “This parallels our evolution from our Transport-as-a-Service business model (which we’re currently in) where Aurora owns and operates the trucks, to our Driver-as-a-Service business model (next several years), where customers buy trucks from our manufacturing partners (Paccar and Volvo) and manage the operations themselves.”

Both Aurora’s short- and long-term goals, as laid out in the company’s Q1 newsletter, remained unchanged, the spokesperson added. Those goals include:

• Delivering “tens” of driverless trucks by the end of 2025
• Continued progress with Aurora’s partners on purpose-built self-driving platforms designed for high-volume production
• Continued progress with Continental on Aurora’s third generation commercial hardware kit that the company believes will unlock “true” scale on the order of tens of thousands of trucks. 

As a reminder, the spokesperson noted that Continental will be making the Aurora Driver hardware in the future, which will be shipped to Paccar and Volvo for integration in the DaaS phase.

Texas Tests Continue

According to Aurora’s spokesperson, the media is confusing the traditional role of a driver with the observers on board its autonomous trucks.

“Observers do not operate or intervene with the Aurora Driver when it’s operating in driverless mode,” the spokesperson noted. “They are there to ‘observe’ and to assist with a timely recovery if the Aurora Driver pulls over to the shoulder of the road.

“Reasons for intervening include bad weather and the Aurora Driver determines its operating out of scope (since operation in rain hasn’t yet been validated) and it makes the decision to end its trip and pull over.