Once upon a time there were truck drivers. The real ones. With calloused hands, an arm out the window even in winter, posters of Edwige Fenech and the CB radio on to cover the miles. Today there are sensors. The cameras. The algorithms. Aurora has just launched its fleet of autonomous trucks on Texas highways, and it seems no one has really noticed.
End of romance on wheels: now robots drive
No protest horns, no flags at the toll booths. Maybe because, after years of waiting and broken promises, the idea of a self-driving truck had become a joke. And yet here they are: silent, precise, without hunger or sleep. The future has arrived once again. And as usual, it didn’t ask permission from the skeptics (or anyone else, for that matter).
A Thousand Miles Without a Driver (and Without a Smudge)
Aurora is a (former) startup founded by former Google, Uber and Tesla bigwigs, with a dream as ambitious as it is controversial: to remove humans from the driver's seat. After years of supervised testing (over 3 million kilometers, for the record), it has deployed its autonomous trucks between the American cities of Dallas and Houston, completing the first 1.200 km in autonomous mode. no human inside. No steering wheel touched, no pedal pressed. Just software, radar and Lidar. And a CEO, Chris Urmson, who decided to sit in the back for the inaugural race. “An honor,” he said.
“We are the first company in the world to operate a commercial driverless transport service on public roads.” – Chris Urmson, CEO of Aurora
Autonomous trucks: highways yes, cities… no
The trick, if we want to call it that, is that highways are much easier for an artificial intelligence to manage. Wide lanes, no surprise intersections, no grandmother with a trolley in the middle of the road. But don't get your hopes up: Aurora is already working to extend the service to two other cities, Step e Phoenix. And then autonomous trucks will start moving through cities, too. Next stop: traffic lights, parking lots, construction sites. Anarchy on four wheels.
In the meantime, there are already customers: Uber Freight e Hirschbach Motor Lines, that is, real heavy commercial transport. They say autonomous trucks will help combat the driver shortage and cut costs. Which, translated, obviously means: fewer wages, fewer strikes, fewer humans.
Between failures and rebirths: why Aurora?
It has not been an easy journey. In the meantime, competing companies such as YourSimple, Embark Trucks e Location have disappeared from the radar, sunk between technical problems, lack of funds and impossible regulations. Aurora, on the other hand, has held out.
“We have demonstrated that we can avoid accidents, predict cars running red lights, even spot pedestrians in the dark.” – Aurora
With a cautious (but not too much) strategy, he invested in of your digital ecosystem. , weighty partnership (As Volvo e Shelf) and a marketing that focuses on reliability and a sustainable future. All very nice. Of course, she too in 2024 he lost something like 748 million dollars. Less than the year before, but still a lot. And investors' patience is not infinite.
Autonomous trucks, the road is long (but at least there's no traffic)
The beauty (so to speak) is that all this rush to autonomous driving was born to solve real problems: lack of drivers, inefficient logistics, rising costs. And I am sure that, in its own way, it will solve them all. And yet, as robot trucks advance rapidly, the uncomfortable question remains: what happens to people? To those jobs that, for better or worse, gave an identity to those who did them?
Aurora drives alone, yes. But do we, with no one at the wheel anymore, still have any idea where we're going?
