Automotive

/

Home & Leisure

Pittsburgh driverless trucker plots Sun Belt expansion

Kris B. Mamula, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on

Published in Automotive News

Autonomous trucker Aurora Innovation Inc. is preparing to open a 1,000-mile stretch of the Sun Belt to driverless shipping, expanding its service to several new states.

The new route will link Fort Worth and Phoenix, which is anticipated this quarter, according to the Strip District-based company.

At the same time, the company plans to open driverless lanes in Texas between Dallas and Loredo, which will include the San Antonio, Austin and Waco metro areas in what the company calls the "nation's biggest international trade gateway" and a critical artery between the U.S. and Mexico.

"Expanding across the Sun Belt and introducing customer endpoints enables us to provide our customers with the capacity they need to move goods at a scale that wasn't possible before," co-founder and CEO Chris Urmson said in a prepared statement. "Being a carrier is a game of margins and if autonomy can work around the clock, it will be key to growing our customers' businesses."

The company anticipates having more than 200 driverless trucks in operation by the end of the year.

 

For the fiscal year ending Dec. 31, Aurora saw a loss from operations of $901 million, up 14.6% from an operational loss of $786 million in 2024, the company reported Wednesday. Aurora had $3 million in revenue in 2025, up from virtually no revenue in 2024 when it operated in a pre-commercial phase.

Aurora said it anticipates generating cash flow from operations that exceed capital expenditures in 2028.

Aurora's self-driving truck technology is designed to operate on multiple vehicle types, from freight hauling trucks to ride hailing passenger cars. The company was cofounded in 2017 by Sterling Anderson and Carnegie Mellon alums Mr. Urmson and Drew Bagnell.


©2026 PG Publishing Co. Visit at post-gazette.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

Comments

blog comments powered by Disqus