Aurora Runs 20 Driverless Trucks in Texas and Aims for 200 by Year's End

The trucks run on Interstate 45 between Houston and Dallas and on I-20 between Fort Worth and El Paso. Aurora founder and CEO Chris Urmson described the technology during a ride with CNBC's Phil LeBeau that lasted more than three hours in the cab of one of the company's autonomous trucks. "It's using lasers, radar, and cameras to look all around it and see the other cars, see the other trucks on the road, and figure out how to drive safely," Urmson said.

Aurora's pitch to freight customers rests on cost and uptime. Urmson said autonomous trucks can cut fuel costs, move goods faster and fill gaps for operators that cannot recruit drivers. Under its "driver as a service" model, customers pay by the mile driven, and the company says its next generation of driverless trucks will make that offer more attractive to shippers pressing to lower costs.

Wall Street analysts put large numbers on the gap between the two approaches. Ravi Shanker, a transportation analyst at Morgan Stanley, estimates that an autonomous fleet should be nearly 7.5 times as profitable as a human-driven fleet today. Bank of America estimates Aurora services will cost about $0.85 per mile, against roughly $1.30 per mile for human driver wages and benefits before indirect labour costs are counted. Aurora reported losing more than $800 million in 2025 and is targeting positive free cash flow in 2028, contingent on a substantial increase in the number of trucks it operates.

Driver supply is central to the case. Autonomous trucks can run as many as 20 hours a day, while federal law limits the hours a human driver may work and requires breaks. Urmson said the technology helps operators "save on fuel economy," move goods more quickly and meet demand "when they can't hire amazing drivers for their teams."

Not everyone in freight is convinced the driver disappears. Sean Wu, CEO of the freight firm uShip, said he understands the cost appeal of a driverless truck but questions how many shipping companies will give up their drivers. "The drivers do more than just move the rig. There is judgement. There is customer service. There is protection," Wu told CNBC. "There is just a lot more to think about than 'Hey they are moving a truck from point A to point B.'"

The Department of Transportation estimates there are about 3.5 million Class 8 semitrucks on U.S. roads. Only a fraction are autonomous, but the market is growing, and Kodiak AI, Gatik and Tesla are also developing autonomous vehicles.

Urmson said he expects continued doubt about safety, including from those who question a driverless truck travelling at 65 or 70 mph. "We've got millions of miles of experience," he said. "We put this through 15 million tests before we put it out on the road." Since it began testing its autonomous technology on public roads in 2022, Aurora has logged more than 440,000 miles, most of them with a human safety operator behind the wheel in case the technology failed.

The freight run that CNBC joined ended in Palmer, Texas, and passed without disruption. The truck pulled off the highway once for less than a minute to reset hazard lights that had come on for an unknown reason. Over three hours on I-45, passing truck drivers repeatedly looked twice at the cab after seeing nobody behind the wheel. For Urmson, the trip added another 200 miles in which Aurora's technology delivered a shipment. "We've been able to put out timelines and we've basically hit those timelines," he said.