Washington, DC
CNN
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Driverless trucks are officially running their first regular long-haul routes, making roundtrips between Dallas and Houston.
On Thursday, autonomous trucking firm Aurora announced it launched commercial service in Texas under its first customers, Uber Freight and Hirschbach Motor Lines, which delivers time- and temperature-sensitive freight. Both companies conducted test runs with Aurora, including safety drivers to monitor the self-driving technology dubbed âAurora Driver.â Auroraâs new commercial service will no longer have safety drivers.
âWe founded Aurora to deliver the benefits of self-driving technology safely, quickly, and broadly, said Chris Urmson, CEO and co-founder of Aurora, in a release on Thursday. âNow, we are the first company to successfully and safely operate a commercial driverless trucking service on public roads.â
The trucks are equipped with computers and sensors that can see the length of over four football fields. In four years of practice hauls the trucksâ technology has delivered over 10,000 customer loads. As of Thursday, the companyâs self-driving tech has completed over 1,200 miles without a human in the truck.
Aurora is starting with a single self-driving truck and plans to add more by the end of 2025.
Self-driving technology continued to garner attention after over a decade of hype, especially from auto companies like Tesla, GM and others that have poured billions into the tech. Companies in the market of autonomous trucking or driving, tend to use states like Texas and California as their testing grounds for the technology.
California-based Gatik does short-haul deliveries for Fortune 500 retailers like Walmart. Another California tech firm, Kodiak Robotics, delivers freight daily for customers across the South but with safety drivers. Waymo, a subsidiary of Google parent company Alphabet, had an autonomous trucking arm but dismantled it in 2023 to focus on its self-driving ride-hailing services.
However, consumers and transportation officials have raised alarms on the safety record of autonomous vehicles. Aurora released its own safety r
17 Comments
superkuh
It's good they're doing this first in a place that doesn't get long term snow accumulation on roads. But eventually there should be autonomous vehicle tests in places with non-cherry picked road conditions.
lenerdenator
Hmmmmm.
So we're going to have a lot of people potentially unemployed because of this…
andy99
Curious if there are specific route features that make this feasible or not, like traffic conditions or the roads or the warehouses on either end.
ge96
Tangent
Reminds me of this (automated systems still doing their thing after humans are gone)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhRapsbwhqE
somethoughts
I feel like the ideal scenario would be to prioritize self driving truck at set times and set long haul freeways (i.e. Long Beach to Las Vegas or Galveston to Dallas) during the night time when there is no regular auto traffic – for example from 1 am-6 am.
That way if a human driver is concerned, they can choose not to drive during this period of time.
Perhaps run the trucks in a train style configuration where a "conductor" can sit in the lead truck and manage any emergency issues that arise (i.e. security, crash or weather related).
If fully autonomous, I could see securing the cargo being real issue – what would stop a few cars passage in front of the truck and helping themselves to the cargo.
EvanAnderson
There's also a trial of "platooning" of driverless trucks on I-70 in Ohio and Indiana: https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardbishop1/2025/04/24/ease-…
A "drivered" lead truck is leading one or more driverless trucks in this case.
I drive the stretch of highway these trucks are on fairly regularly. I don't know that I've seen a group of them yet but I'm keeping my eye out.
I'm probably just showing my age, but I like the idea of a "drivered" truck leading driverless trucks versus a completely autonomous system. It's similar to my attitude on crewed spaceflight– I like the idea of the ingenuity and capacity for independent thought supervising an automated systems, versus autonomous automated systems.
kgwxd
Just as there's about to be nothing to ship
_heimdall
It will be interesting to see how this plays out with any impacts from tariffs if we keep playing that game long term.
I guess I should say its morbid curiosity. If we do in fact have a lot of drivers out of work because international shipping is way down, I hope humans are hired before these trucks.
supportengineer
In America, we are willing to do anything to avoid expanding or upgrading our rail infrastructure.
wonderwonder
The future is here. Truckers are one of the largest employers in the country. We are moving fast towards a new era. We need to start thinking about how we adjust as a society
A4ET8a8uTh0_v2
I am of two minds about all this. On the one hand, I see the clear, long-term potential given that half the people I see while driving are somehow on their phone. From that perspective, it can't come soon enough. Some people need to be off the road. On the other, I am annoyed that we are effectively beta testing those on public roads with public paying the price.
NanoYohaneTSU
None of those numbers are impressive. Longhaul only from Dallas to Houston. What's missing in the article is the huge number of issues that the system most certainly has.
We've been promised driverless technology for over 10 years now. If you can't do it with cars, then why does anyone think we would have it with delivery trucks?
Please use critical thinking for one second. I beg you HN. This is just another tech company scam that will get dumped as soon as they get the investor money.
gerdesj
When these things can drive to Moose Fucker in the far north, across frozen lakes etc then we are in the future. For now: cute but could do better.
mmooss
Is that what the public wants? I suspect that if the public was aware, the verdict would be clear.
notepad0x90
I'm assuming these are electric? Because even with a driver, longhaul electric trucks are not practical at scale right now, the energy infrastructure and capacity to support them is nowhere near there.
My point being (and please correct me), this is practical but 15-20 years away from widespread adaption, best case.
culi
If anyone else is just curious about the companies involved:
> autonomous trucking firm Aurora announced it launched commercial service in Texas under its first customers, Uber Freight and Hirschbach Motor Lines
https://aurora.tech/
hoherd
I expected to find some of the tech that snow plows use on Donner Pass for lane keeping, RRDPS, but couldn't find any info indicating that they are using highway embedded sensors to aid the autonomous trucks.
https://dot.ca.gov/-/media/dot-media/programs/research-innov…
> The RRPDS must maintain an estimate of the vehicle state
(i.e., position, velocity, heading, and heading rate) relative to the roadway with position accurate to a few
centimeters.