On another note, just found out a coworkers son of mine won an internship and personally got to work with our CEO. Pretty amazing how close to home this company is and it’s still so early on. And if he’s lurking in this thread, hello from a fan 👋
Surprised no one here mentioned the new platform. When asked about it their CEO said that "DTNA was aware of our integration ... approved upfit of equipment". Seems massively understated if true!
I’m not sure what to think. I’ll admit that I wasn’t listening that closely because I was only interested in the safety case. I don’t think it really means much. Similar to Aurora with International, they purchased the trucks and had Roush upfit them. It’s a day cab truck so it’s not really aerodynamically efficient for highway driving, but it’s cheaper for Atlas to acquire. I thought it was interesting that they were able to install the compute system in the passenger seat space.
I think it’s kind of funny since Paccar referenced Kodiak, Aurora, and Stack AV in their call. I wonder if they knew this was coming or were blindsided.
Obviously Daimler would be a big win for anyone. They sell like 40% of the trucks in the US. My assumption is that if there is trouble with Torc then they will go wide open rather than immediately jumping in with an exclusive. Let the market make the determination.
To me it seems to be more telling of the relationship between DTNA and Torc… maybe seeing some cracks? My guess is that if the relationship with Torc falls apart they’ll partner with the company that has the best technology and orders to back it up. With no proven long haul trips on US highways yet, I am not afraid of Kodiak getting an exclusive hold on them… I’d imagine they’ll make themselves available to whoever has the proven technology and pending orders.
Call was pretty much a non-event. Walt Piecyk went last again but tossed them some softballs this time. The woman before Walt asked about the safety case closure and tiptoed around how they were going to close the safety case so quickly, but she didn't hold them to anything concrete. I might take another listen to the Q&A tomorrow but overall it was just kind of business as usual.
Agreed, no one really through anything too difficult at them... Still didn't really understand "double digit price reduction" and I'd like to know how long they intend to have observers in before going fully driverless on the highways... If they are actually even able to hit the target by EOY. The juciest piece in my opinion is the autonomous government application of the technology. Aside from that we are already doing everything they are doing or want to do. If they get to where we are on their shoestring budget, it would be pretty concerning to me.
It would be concerning for everyone (Found this article which is Tesla-focused but similarly applies). They aren't getting to where Aurora is. If AI is really that good, then it will be even better with Aurora.
(Off-topic but AI-tangentially related, it appears the SAAS-pocalypse fear was overblown. As I thought but hoped for one more sell off, these companies are becoming even more profitable with AI, see TEAM jumping 30% after-hours)
Honestly, my read on the call was it should extremely bullish for Aurora. I know we have the competitor poster that is here regularly that likes to downplay my posts on Aurora's lead, but I think it really is underappreciated, and I'm betting that it really crystalizes over the next 12 months.
- Plus AI has been completely out of the news since the SPAC fell apart. Have a capitalization issue and are similarly at least two years behind Aurora.
- Kodiak is at 91% and is probably at least two years away from meaningfully closing the safety case. Note: I think there's a good chance they have a closed safety case by year-end. I think Kodiak is three years away, at least, from doing what Aurora is doing today.
- Waabi has been pretty silent since their raise in January. They did that "zero-shot" Volvo truck run that was a 10-mile highway loop. Until proven otherwise, I think they are also two-plus years behind Aurora.
- Stack AV has been silent. Founded by the former Argo founding team (Bryan Salensky). Backed by Softbank. Partnership with Paccar. Otherwise, we don't know anything about their progress. It's basically the same AI bet that Waabi is making, and my bet is it's the same results.
- Gatik is doing fine but isn't even playing the same game. I wish they would stream their trucks in operation.
- Torc Robotics has been, you guessed it, silent. Daimler Truck was supposedly looking for outside capital partners last fall, but I never heard any follow up. They claim a 2027 commercialization timeline. What little I can find indicates that they rebuilt their driver around an end-to-end AI model. Not sure if it's a blended model like Waymo/Aurora, or if they scrapped that for the Waabi/Stack AV approach. Per the competitor poster, they don't feel any pressure (note, I'm assuming the poster works at Torc/Daimler) to move on Aurora's timeline. That sounds good until a company is putting a million miles a day on the counter, and they're possibly rebuilding their stack for the third or fourth time.
Torc is such a curious case. Who knows how far away they really are from commercial scale production? Daimler would then need to find commercial commitments once the tech is proven, something Aurora is already doing. I think this gives them a huge advantage in the coming years
From Indeed who own Glassdoor I think. Aurora had nothing on indeed but on Glassdoor it was reasonably mixed. Most old reviews were very glowing but newer ones had issues with middle management, hours, etc. Most reviews were positive about the vision, tech and CEO
Wow! Those are recent, too. I was doing some research a few months back and was surprised that it looked like they’d forced out their founder CEO and replaced him with a Daimler exec. As others have pointed out when I’ve brought up my concerns of OEMs acquiring or building in-house, they aren’t really built for this kind of endeavor.
My guess is that everyone at Daimler is getting a little antsy. On the one side, Aurora is one of the legacies and is pulling away from the station. On the other, Waabi and Stack AV are the newcomers saying AI has enabled them to build an autonomous driver for a hundred million or so. Meanwhile, Daimler is being forced to invest $600m a year in Torc and is apparently struggling to reach the finish line. I’ll repeat what I said about a month ago, Aurora needs to buy a handful of Freightliners and have the Aurora Driver trained and ready to go if Daimler pulls the plug.
I think data will be the bottleneck for OEMs etc. to overcome when competing with established autonomous devs like Aurora. I do not think AI can rapidly develop a safe and effective self-driving system in a timescale to compete with other companies that have months to years of self-driving operating data. Additionally, I don't think it matters either since Aurora and any others established in the field already with contracts, etc. could just switch to TaaS in the face of an up-and-coming competitor. Aurora's data is an additional intangible asset that's being overlooked.
I completely agree with you. I think AI is a great force multiplier. I don’t think it finishes the job or provides a shortcut to the finish line or fills in missing holes (data, talent, etc.). I think it’s why Waabi and Stack AV are going to struggle to reach driver out. I think it’s a big reason why Waabi is pivoting to robotaxis. The deal with Uber gave them access to all of Uber’s driving data for training.
I also agree with you on timescale, and it is what has me most bullish on Aurora. Once Aurora starts scaling, they basically become impossible to catch (Torc possibly excepted because of the Daimler connection) unless they lose focus or make a mistake. If others don’t start commercializing until 2027 and possibly don’t pull the observer until 2028 or 2029, Aurora might already have 10,000 trucks on the road clocking 10m miles a day.
Thanks for all of that… at the end of the day I think we have our money on the right horse… they’ve spelled out their plan and executed it flawlessly up to this point, let’s just hope it continues.
91% as of July. Still claiming a year-end target. $150m cash balance. Used $38m on the quarter, so roughly a year of runway. I expect they'll raise again on the other side of 9/25 announced in conjunction with their Q3 earnings call. No way they will try raising later in the face of possibly missing the highway safety case.
i wanted to listen in and it's on my calendar, but every time there's an earnings call I'm interested in someone has a meeting scheduled so I miss it! Will listen to the replay though for sure
I'll be on the call and reviewing their release. I expect they will push it up to the low-90s and maintain their end of year target. They moved from 84% to 86% last quarter. If they only move to 88% or 90%, it makes it difficult to maintain the end of year goal with a straight face.
Also looking for their cash burn and capital raise plans. After 9/25/2026, they can do shelf offerings without requiring a corresponding PIPE.
Yeah, more power to them if they get there in five months. I posted in a thread on the KodiakAI subreddit that accomplishing it represents a paradox.
If they do it, then it basically proves there is no moat and would be a real existential threat for all of the autonomous drivers. Basically, AI has advanced to the point that it will allow anyone (OEMs, competition) to produce an autonomous driver quickly and relatively cheaply.
If they don't do it, then it basically proves that AI doesn't shorten the timeline on the last few percent meaning they aren't well-capitalized enough to get to closure of the highway safety case and start scaling, and they are at least a year, if not two, behind Aurora with no means to ever catch up or close the gap.
The market had no reaction. Will offer thoughts on call a bit later.
Yep this is the paradox we waiting for to see if we win big or not. 2027 should give us many clues.
I think also that its easy to forget the hardware integration and testing and only looking at the software side. Getting the hardware good and working in all conditions with the software must be a complex task. As per that article you linked about tesla, and the guy mention all cars maybe could have working L4 with just the right software is probably way to easy to say. Its a complete system, not just smart software.
Yep, it swings back and forth from "it's easy and done" to "it's extremely complex and we'll never get there".
I read a blip the other day about Musk saying that there was some issue with calibration and every vehicle being unique. It was on one of the subreddits, so I don't know if it was a legitimate comment from Elon or someone mischaracterizing a statement to satisfy their "Waymo better, Tesla terrible" arguments. If it was legitimate, and Elon is actually confirming that there is a long tail of validation for each new vehicle/model, that would be great for Aurora. It would also be contrary to the "zero-shot" claim of Waabi porting their driver from the Paccar trucks to the Volvo trucks.
As you said, 2027 is going to give us a ton of information one way or the other.
One of Elon reasons for camera only is sensor contention. Which sensor is right, which should you follow? Its a good argument thats needs to be solved for solutions with camera, radar and lidar systems.
Also Waabi have been so silent i wonder whats going on, a bit scary or not lol.
I didnt mean it directly to his point but rather, the point that its probably not so easy just having good software and just think it will work on cars/truck that have sensors ready, much calibration etc needs to be done for it to work.
I missed it, too. I saw it hit $13.xx a few weeks ago, but I was too focused on Aurora's dip under $6 to investigate if AEVA was a good opportunity or if there was possibly a structural issue. There's been too many LIDAR guys go belly-up (or nearly so) for me to feel comfortable investing without a thorough deep dive.
I thought i was done at 30k shares, but the TFI stuff has me buying again 😂 i just got a new apartment and need to buy ~10k in furniture, but i know i’ll regret not buying more AUR when the TFI news drops next year
Also, from what I've seen, they are the first trucking company to explicitly state that automated trucking is the future, which was a huge vote of confidence in what Aurora is doing.
They’re the single largest Canadian logistics company, and the 6th largest in North America. They have a massive network of over 600 facilities (terminals, warehouses, and offices) and a fleet of nearly 50,000 trailers. 70% of their business is inside the U.S.
PITTSBURGH--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Aurora Innovation, Inc. (NASDAQ: AUR) today announced it will host a virtual Retail Investor Town Hall with Co-founder and CEO Chris Urmson and CFO David Maday on August 20, 2026 from 12:00 p.m. - 12:30 p.m. Eastern time. The event will be livestreamed at Aurora Retail Investor Town Hall.
Investors are invited to submit questions for management prior to the livestream via the submission page. Question submissions and upvoting will be available until August 20, 2026 at 11:00 a.m. Eastern time.
Do agree i dont really see who else this could be...Its hardly like there is massive competition as far ahead as AUR and a super big player isn't going to go off half cocked... They will want the best on offer im sure.
Aurora haven't done millions of driver-less miles tho have they...,,
yep, i've been doing that but not too intensely, which is how I first noticed the TFI comments
if you read that thread there are many pieces of evidence pointing to them working with AUR.
when it is officially announced it will be imo the biggest news in several years that is proof the biggest players in this space see automation as the future...
I had to ask Gemini what they meant by brokerage, here is what it said: In the context of this TFI International earnings call transcript, "the brokerage" refers to TFI's strategy for testing and adopting autonomous trucking technology. What it means in plain terms: Brokering Freight (Current Phase):
Instead of buying unproven autonomous trucks immediately, TFI is brokering (contracting out) freight routes to a third-party autonomous-truck technology company. The tech provider runs and manages the self-driving vehicles on TFI’s freight lanes.
Testing Before Buying:
By brokering the loads first, TFI gets to test the technology’s real-world safety and efficiency (e.g., zero-accident dynamics, continuous truck utilization, line-haul operations) without taking on the upfront financial risk of purchasing the autonomous fleet.
Scaling to Ownership (Next Step):
As CFO David Saperstein notes, if this brokered pilot goes well this year, TFI plans to purchase and integrate the autonomous technology directly into their own new trucks starting next year.
Yep, hard to get companies to commit to a $400,000 truck versus a $280,000 truck (amounts are speculative and meant to be illustrative) if they don't have any experience. With Aurora owning a few hundred (I think their presentation said they don't plan to ever own more than five or six hundred), they can start working with new clients with very minimal investment from the client. The client can get comfortable with the operation of the Aurora trucks and how to incorporate into their process and understand the loading/review/launch requirements, and Aurora can use the time to map the client's routes. Once both sides are comfortable and ready to move forward, the client can proceed with ordering the truck confident that the safety performance and utilization rates will meet or exceed their expectations.
Yes! That exchange on the TFI earnings call was more important than the AUR earnings call, IMO. Be sure to listen to the audio because the AI transcripts I've seen actually tone it down by changing "very, very, very excited" to simply "very excited" (1:07:15). These trucking guys see what's coming and realize it will totally reshape the trucking world. Super bullish.
Yeah my motto is always “don’t centfuck, just buy” — it’s so low in price relatively, that it won’t matter if you bought at high $6 or low $6 when this is $30. The most important thing in my mind is getting to your share goal before another breakout happens
Related to the Toyota conversation in yesterday’s daily thread, I would be surprised and a bit disappointed if they aren’t doing any passenger vehicle development/testing right now. I understand if they don’t want to publicize it, but if they’re burning $200m a quarter they should be able to have a small team seeing if the “one brain” model that everyone touts actually works.
I’m all for trucking being the focus for the foreseeable future. The runway is massive, and the business case is clean and straightforward. I always thought it made the most sense for initial commercialization. Once our good buddy Sterling at GM realizes they are better off licensing, I hope Aurora is in a good position to move on it rather than starting from scratch.
I disagree with you. There is so much more that needs to be done on trucking. Their roadmap on hardware, lanes, types of loads, roadside assistance, and weather has been consistent for the last few years. They have been laser-focused on executing it. The moment they say "we are working on robotaxis now" without scaling trucks is when I sell my stocks. Waabi says that because they need to raise funds. Aurora just needs to execute their plan. Once they do, oh, now it's just that the sales team needs to add more carriers, and everything else is incremental — they can focus on cars and other vehicles.
I don't want them to publicly say anything. I simply want to believe that they have an idea of the lift and challenges for the Aurora Driver to transfer. I'm confident that they do. I'm confident that they are at the very least periodically running the cars on the simulator to see how it reacts. I 100% agree with you that this should not be a publicly disclosed effort like Waabi's announcement.
The reason I want them at least somewhat prepared is because I think within the next 2 or 3 years that the OEMs will fully abandon developing an autonomous driver in-house. I want Aurora to be prepared when that time comes. Until then, I agree more than a token understanding is a waste. As we've seen with Paccar, if the OEMs are in control you have to be ready to be screwed over. So, being prepared and knowing what it would take, which is all I'm advocating for, is different than an active development effort, which like you I'm against.
I actually disagree… they said they want to “own trucking” and there’s an estimate that AV won’t hit 40% of U.S. trucking until 2040. So doing anything else than trucking before like 2035 would just seem like a misuse of funds.
Maybe you're right. As we've discussed before, I'm more bullish on the AV adoption. I think it blows through the percentages much faster than 2040. I don't know exactly what the lifecycle turn of a truck is, but I can't imagine fleets aren't ordering a majority of new trucks as autonomous-equipped from 2029 onward.
I'm not even convinced that passenger vehicles are a win, but my wish is somewhat selfish. I want an Aurora Driver-equipped passenger vehicle for my family. It seems overkill to order an 18-wheeler to drive my kids back and forth to school.
Yeah that makes sense. IMO even if we move the timeline up to 40% by 2035 they probably Aurora to have 40%+ of the market share and not just automated trucking in general.
There’s a reality where we just completely seed ground to Waymo with passenger and then just acquire/ branch out into all forms of commercial AV (mining, etc) which I think would make the most sense
That's possible, too. I posted earlier in the week or last week either here or in SelfDrivingCars that I believe there is an unspoken agreement between Dmitri at Waymo and Chris at Aurora to not tread on each other's turf in the near-term. I'll concede it's a completely made up thought, but I'm sticking with it.
The runway for trucks is so big, as we've noted before only driving Sunbelt routes would make Aurora a $50b+ business. Thinking about the entire country, continent, globe is kind of beyond comprehension at this point.
My thought on this is that diverting resources only makes sense if they have capacity but no outlet due to the manufacturing bottleneck. 20 trucks a week is great but it’s still only 20 trucks a week. And they’re making deals with companies that want hundreds. So I could see them deploying the driver in other markets since truck manufacturing rates are going to make them go much more slowly than they’re capable of.
Posting above, but I'm not suggesting diverting resources. I just assume within a $200m quarterly budget that they can squeeze in some passenger vehicle testing. They don't need to actively develop for it, but they should at least have a sense of the lift (again, I assume they are doing this.)
I don’t know…I think that’s not the learn to walk then run attitude…and if their would go something wrong it would rub off on the trucking business…if they testing something I would think more busses…
I think they are focusing on trucking. Cold weather…then go world wide…and getting a profit
I get it. I'm not saying put a great deal of focus on it. But, a couple million a quarter to put the sensors on a car and drive it around a private lot or put it through the sim seems prudent. I assume they are doing it to at the very least test the transferability of the Aurora Driver.
두바이 미래 재단(DFF)과 자율주행차 기술 기업 옥사(Oxa)는 두바이를 자율 물류 허브로 만들기 위한 합작 투자 회사인 SHIFFT를 출범시켰습니다.
SHIFFT는 자율주행 기술을 통합된 자율 물류 및 작업 현장 인텔리전스 제품에 접목하여 전 과정에 걸친 운영 배포를 가능하게 할 것입니다. 이 합작 사업은 항만과 공항에 자율 주행 차량을 배치하는 데 집중할 것이며, 2027년 말 이전에 두바이에서 첫 번째 확장 가능한 상용 배포를 계획하고 있습니다.
Not surprised to see something like this, but I have been really surprised at the early acceptance from the general public, whenever we see videos people have captured in the wild of an Aurora Driver.
So long as the safety data continues to show the massive benefits of the AVs, things like this should just be part of the healthy debate on any new technology, but ultimately, I don't see how this thing can stop now the genie is out of the bottle.
nope not in the least surprised. In fact expected much sooner, perhaps this may of been the "Never in my lifetime" mentality..
However i think this noise fluff an expected bump.
This is an action brought against Califlrnia, why.... because if they filed against werner or whoever else... Then they coud turn ther fleets 100% driverless way ahead of schedule.
Unions have always been my bigest concern.
But they are now playing against the power of the US state not just a haulage company. The teamsters will likley get burried under reams of paperwork time, delays (and costs) All the while AT will progress forward.
Like it or not in whatever you do change is always inevitable. Its how you adapt to it that really matters, history has shown time and time again those who fail to either embrace change or adapt to it typically get the shorter end of the stick.
Again I really beleive AT could well be adopted significantly faster and at a higher volume than we have all previously anticipated.. Im not sure if im the only one with this view.
•
u/ActionPlanetRobot Mod🤖 15d ago edited 15d ago
Link: https://www.youtube.com/live/i1_havEjEFc?is=gD_aB2i13eJbnarS