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Autonomous vehicle technology startupAurora Innovationis place April 2025 for commercial-grade deployment of its autonomous trucks , pushing its timeline back by about a one-quarter . The party had earlier planned to launch by the oddment of 2024 . The company said it detain the launch so it can proceed to corroborate its self - driving technology .
“ While this is modestly later than we had intended , this timing stay within the border of error we have foresee and conveyed throughout 2024 , ” Aurora CEO and conscientious objector - founder Chris Urmson spell in histhird - quarter earningsshareholder alphabetic character . “ With our purpose to innovate the Aurora Driver with a crawl , walk , run access , this shift to our timeline will have a paltry fiscal impact . ”
Aurora will go to food market as a carrier , but its end goal is to prosecute a machine driver - as - a - service model , wherein carriers buy motortruck with the Aurora Driver tech on board and then offer their services via those trucks to shippers .
One of the ways Aurora mensurate the carrying out and commercial readiness of its Aurora Driver is its use of on - website funding , which the company says will be the most expensive backing provide . As of the ending of the third quarter , the Aurora Driver was deliver commercial loading without the support of a outside human 80 % of the time , which is up from 75 % in the second quarter . The goal is to attain 90 % by commercial-grade launching in the springiness .
The inauguration specify to deploy up to 10 driverless truck during commercial-grade launch , with the goal of increasing to tens of trucks by the end of 2025 .
Aurora has been testing commercial loads with fender customers including FedEx , Werner , Schneider , Hirschbach , Uber Freight , and others . The troupe schedule more or less 160 commercial-grade loads per calendar week , which Aurora says is more than double the volume from last class . As of October 27 , 2024 , Aurora ’s trucks have autonomously surrender more than 8,200 loads and driven over 2.2 million commercial miles — but all with a human behind the wheel .
Aurora , a pre - revenue company work up groundbreaker technical school , commemorate an operating expense of $ 196 million in the third quarter , including stock - based compensation of $ 35 million . That ’s less than the $ 212 million it spent in the same period last year , which Aurora articulate manifest its commitment to being frugal on its path to commercialisation .
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The inauguration finish the quarter with $ 1.4 billion in cash and investments after raisingalmost half a billion dollarsin August , which should give Aurora runway into 2026 and fund its initial microscope stage of scaling and getting to a place of sustainability .
chastening : This story has been updated to reflect that Aurora Driver was deliver commercial cargo without a human machine driver 75 % of the fourth dimension in the 2d fourth part .
