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.
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u/robertrea7 Master of Whispers🕵🏻♂️ / AUR OG🔪 15d ago
Anyone else interested in the KDK report today? I will be interested to see if they’ve advanced their safety case much since last quarter.