Aurora Innovation announced significant expansions of its commercial operations. The company said it surpassing 20,000 driverless miles at the end of June.

Additionally, Aurora’s driverless fleet has grown to three trucks.

And the company is driverless commercial operations at night and opening a Phoenix autonomous truck terminal.

“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. “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.”

Double Asset Utilization 

Aurora has expanded driverless operations on its Dallas-to-Houston lane to now include nighttime driving.

This capability more than doubles truck utilization potential, Aurora said. It also significantly shortens delivery times on long-haul routes and creates a path to profitability for autonomous trucking.

Autonomous trucks can also make roads safer, the company said.

Due to low visibility and driver fatigue, a disproportionate 37% of fatal crashes involving large trucks occur at night. 

The Aurora Driver reliably sees and understands the world around it day and night without ever getting tired, according to the company.

Powered by Aurora’s proprietary, long-range FirstLight Lidar, the Aurora Driver can detect objects in the dark more than 450 meters away, identifying pedestrians, vehicles, and debris up to 11-seconds sooner than a traditional driver.

Aurora Opens Phoenix Terminal

Aurora’s new terminal in Phoenix opened in June and exemplifies an infrastructure-light approach that resembles how Aurora plans to integrate with future customer endpoints. 

This evolution optimizes for speed to market and enables Aurora’s plan to deliver freight directly to customer endpoints, the company said.

Fort Worth to Phoenix is nearly half the distance of the busy Atlanta to Los Angeles freight corridor, taking more than 15 hours to complete. 

Self-driving trucks can halve transit times, especially on long routes that exceed the 11-hour driving limit for human drivers. 

Aurora is currently making autonomous hauls on this lane for Hirschbach and Werner.

To further build on its commitment to industry-leading transparency, Aurora launched Aurora Driver Live, a publicly available livestream of its self-driving truck operations. 

The livestream demonstrates the safety, reliability, and growing maturity of the Aurora Driver, offering a first-of-its-kind glimpse into the future of freight transportation.