Building on Dallas-Houston pilot, Uber Freight and Aurora will give 'hundreds of carriers' early access to self-driving trucks » Dallas Innovates

An Uber Freight trailer pulled by a truck equipped with Aurora Driver. [Photo: Globe Newswire]

Uber Freight and Aurora Innovation have partnered for years to operate self-driving trucks between Dallas and Houston, and Fort Worth and El Paso, with a safety driver in the cab overseeing the operation. Later this year, Aurora plans to begin fully “driverless” operations, which may eliminate the need for a human in the cab. Now, the two companies have launched a new program, Premier Autonomy, to help truckers of all sizes get on board with driverless operations.

Announced today, Premier Autonomy will offer Uber Freight shippers early booking access to “more than 1 billion Aurora driverless miles by 2030.” The program will continue to integrate and deploy autonomous trucks across the Uber Freight network, enabling shippers to “increase utilization rates and improve operational efficiencies through autonomous technology,” the partners said.

Chicago-based Uber Freight said it will be one of Aurora’s first customers on its Dallas to Houston cargo route, with a fully driverless service set to launch for shippers at the end of 2024.

The “democratization” of self-driving trucks

Aurora Driver Hardware Animation Video Stills [Image: Aurora]

“Uber Freight and Aurora see a tremendous opportunity to bring autonomous trucks to carriers of all sizes, helping them increase revenue, expand their fleets and strengthen their bottom line,” Uber Freight founder and CEO Lior Ron said in a statement. “Self-driving trucks make freight movement more efficient, and this industry-first program will help carriers foster and accelerate their adoption of autonomous trucks. We’re proud to work with the great team at Aurora to bring this technology to carriers and ultimately usher in a new era of logistics.”

The companies’ “industry-first program” will give trucking companies an “early, streamlined path” to purchase and equip them with Aurora Driver, a self-driving truck technology that Aurora called “feature complete” last year.

According to Uber Freight, benefits of the Premier Autonomy program include a subscription to Aurora Driver for autonomous freight transport, the opportunity to drive more than 1 billion driverless miles by 2030, and higher autonomous truck utilization through the planned and seamless integration of Aurora Driver into the Uber Freight platform.

Dallas-based Aurora’s president says the company aims to have “thousands of driverless trucks on the road.”

Ossa Fisher

Last year, Aurora strengthened its ties to North Texas by naming Ossa Fisher as Dallas-based president. Aurora itself has offices in Mountain View, California, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The company is headquartered in Coppell, northwest of Dallas, with terminals for its Aurora Horizon trucking product in the southern Dallas suburbs of Palmer and Fort Worth. Aurora also operates autonomous trucking operations for FedEx, Warner Bros. and Schneider Electric out of DFW, and plans to roll out a test fleet of self-driving ride-hailing Toyota Siennas in Dallas in 2022.

“Uber Freight allows us to provide hundreds of shippers with priority access to autonomous truck capacity that they wouldn’t otherwise have access to,” Fisher said in a statement today. “Working with shippers of all sizes is one of the many ways we’re transforming the industry and putting thousands of autonomous trucks on the road. We’re thrilled and valued to have a company like Uber Freight reserving our long-term capacity for their customers – we all see shared value in this service.”

Drivers no longer need to sleep during the journey, resulting in a 32% increase in energy efficiency

Uber Freight noted that it would take a human-driven truck “two to three days” to transport a package from Dallas to Los Angeles, and that an Aurora driver “could potentially complete the journey in one day,” the company said.

Aurora says its research shows that autonomous trucks could be up to 32% more energy efficient than traditional trucking “by optimizing highway speeds, reducing empty miles and idling, increasing vehicle utilization and off-peak driving, and programming eco-driving.”

Uber Freight and Aurora said they have moved “millions of pounds of freight” since trials began in 2020 and have “gained significant insights on how to effectively transport goods autonomously.”

For mid-market operators looking for AV solutions, “This is it”

To expand, both Aurora and Uber Freight aim to do for driverless trucking what Uber did for its ride-sharing app: leverage vehicles owned by others.

Zach Andreoni, Aurora’s vice president of business development, explained some of the thinking behind the move to Transport Topics.

“It’s no secret that the freight market is in a slump,” Andreoni told Transport Topics. “We have oversupply, sluggish prices, rising costs, and the promise of AVs. [autonomous vehicles] “Our objective is to provide this supercharged asset that can operate more efficiently beyond the hours of service,” Andreoni said. “So this is already a pretty compelling value proposition. And with our program, this is the way to get it for mid-market airlines that are wondering how to get it.”

“We aim to be commercially viable and driverless by the end of this year, and then we will operate driverless freight for our customers as a third-party carrier,” Andreoni added, “which means we will own the asset and operate it for our customers in a similar way to a third-party carrier, and the economics will reflect that. But this is a temporary model.”