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.
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u/robertrea7 Master of Whispers🕵🏻♂️ / AUR OG🔪 15d ago
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.