Aurora Innovation, an autonomous trucking technology maker, announced Wednesday an expansion of its commercial operations, which began in May. The expansion includes growing its driverless fleet to three trucks and surpassing 20,000 driverless miles at the end of June. The company also announced the opening of a terminal in Phoenix.
“Efficiency, uptime, and reliability are important for our customers, and Aurora is showing we can deliver,” said Chris Urmson, co-founder and CEO of Aurora, in a press release. “Just three months after launch, we’re running driverless operations day and night and we’ve expanded our terminal network to Phoenix. Our rapid progress is beginning to unlock the full value of self-driving trucks for our customers, which has the potential to transform the trillion-dollar trucking industry.”
To build on the momentum, the company expanded to nighttime driving on its existing driverless lane from Dallas to Houston. The expansion allows for continuous utilization, shortening delivery times and serving as part of its path to autonomous trucking profitability.
Aurora notes that the unlocking of nighttime autonomous operations can also improve road safety. It cited a 2021 Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration report on large truck and bus crashes that noted a disproportionate 37% of fatal crashes involving large trucks occurred at night. This comes despite trucks traveling fewer miles during those hours.
Compared to a human driver who may deal with challenges such as low visibility and fatigue, autonomous trucks contain an array of cameras, lidar and radar allowing the vehicles greater visibility.
Aurora’s SAE L4 autonomous driving system, called the Aurora Driver, can detect objects in the dark more than 450 meters away via its proprietary, long-range FirstLight Lidar. The lidar can identify pedestrians, vehicles, and debris up to 11 seconds sooner than a traditional driver, according to the company.
In addition to the fleet and operations expansion, the new terminal in Phoenix, which opened in June, is part of an infrastructure-light approach. Aurora notes this design will closely resemble how the company plans to integrate with future customer endpoints, optimized for speed to market.
This expansion of the more than 15-hour Fort Worth to Phoenix route opens up opportunities to showcase the autonomous truck’s ability to cut transit time in half compared to a single driver, who is limited to the 11-hour hours-of-service limitation. Aurora is piloting the autonomous trucking Phoenix lane with two customers, Hirschbach and Werner.
The company is also expected to announce its second-quarter results on Wednesday, with a conference call at 5 p.m. ET.
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