Self-driving vehicle startups have often drawn skepticism for overpromising and underdelivering—see: Argo AI and GM’s Cruise subsidiary, both now in corporate junkyards—but in early May, one of them achieved a milestone that had long eluded the industry: delivering a truckload of cargo for a paying customer on public roads—with no human behind the wheel.
Aurora’s May 1 announcement that it had begun commercial deliveries for its first customers, Hirschbach Motor Lines and Uber Freight, on two autonomous semitrailer trucks between Dallas and Houston followed some eight years of work by the Pittsburgh-based firm.
Aurora reached that milestone about half a year later than it had planned last year, owing to extra time needed to complete its “safety case” testing and self-certification. “This is a multiyear journey,” says Aurora president Ossa Fisher. “A few months seemed minuscule in the grand scheme of both the opportunity that lies ahead of us and what came before.”
But barely two weeks after the announcement, the company was back to having safety operators sitting behind the wheels of the two trucks.
