Aurora delays driverless trucks until April 2025

Aurora’s deployment of driverless trucks has been delayed until April 2025, the autonomous truck company has announced.

Previously, Aurora said its fully autonomous trucks would be traveling between Dallas and Houston by the end of 2024.

“While this is modestly later than we had intended, this timing remains within the margin of error we anticipated and conveyed throughout 2024,” Aurora CEO Chris Urmson said during a presentation to investors on Wednesday, Oct. 30. “With our intention to introduce the Aurora Driver with a crawl-walk-run approach, this shift to our timeline will have a negligible financial impact and does not affect our scaling efforts on our path to self-funding.”

The company plans to start its operations with as many as 10 trucks and to expand from there.

“In the second half of 2025, our focus will be expanding our product capabilities, adding new lanes and increasing capacity to tens of trucks by the end of 2025,” an Aurora presentation stated.

The company plans to operate driverless trucks from Fort Worth, Texas, to Phoenix sometime in 2025.

Cybersecurity concerns

As Aurora plans to operate trucks without a human on board, the U.S. Department of Commerce is attempting to address the threat of cyberattacks.

In September, the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security issued a notice of proposed rulemaking to prohibit transactions involving connected vehicle technology by China or other “foreign adversaries.” The proposal is aimed at addressing “undue or unacceptable” risks to national security in regard to communication technology.

The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association filed comments about the proposal on Monday, Oct. 28.

“OOIDA has raised safety and cybersecurity concerns regarding the development of autonomous vehicles as the technology has been deployed in recent years,” the Association wrote in formal comments. “We believe this Department of Commerce proposal can help implement necessary federal oversight for autonomous vehicle safety and protect private personal and vehicle information.”

The Association also noted the Department of Defense disclosed that a Chinese company sells lidar to Aurora.

“As of September 2024, Aurora has hauled over 7,000 loads for pilot customers across nearly 2 million commercial miles,” OOIDA wrote. “It’s unclear exactly how many miles have already been traversed in the U.S. by autonomous trucking companies using Chinese or Russian technology components.”

Meanwhile, Aurora told the agency that the proposal could be “significantly disruptive.” LL