Back in 2015, Waymo, the autonomous car company, had its first public rider in Austin, Texas. Shortly thereafter, they moved their testing to California, and over the last few years have slowly expanded their practices to other major cities. Last Spring, Waymo made their way back to Austin, beginning to operate in a 43 square mile range of the city. This return to Austin happened after Waymo partnered with Uber, the ridesharing app. This means that the people of Austin can quickly and easily hail a safe driving ride to get around town.
In addition to Waymo, other autonomous vehicles have been working in Texas.
Aurora Innovation, a software company turned autonomous vehicle company working on creating autonomous semi-trucks, has been designing and testing their vehicles in the Lone Star state for most of its time. This week, the vehicles are officially launching on public roads. The vehicle, dubbed the Aurora Driver, will run freight between Dallas and Houston. The first customers they are servicing in this testing phase are Hirschbach Motor Lines and Uber Freight.
If their tests go well, they will expand their driving range to El Paso by the end of the year.
With this new phase for the Aurora Driver, Aurora becomes the first company to ever have a commercial self-driving, heavy duty vehicle operating on public roads. For their drives from Dallas to Houston, they will primarily operate on Interstate 45. The CEO of Aurora and Texas Governor Greg Abbott spoke excitedly about the progress being made, each expressing pride over the operations beginning in Texas.
Aurora’s business plans include finally reaching profitability by 2028.
Currently, Aurora is in the technological development stage in which they are relying entirely on share sales. They raised around $483 million in share sales in order to reach their launch date. The date was set to be in 2024, but had to be delayed to the spring of 2025, which brings us to now. Based on how this launch goes, they will expand the vehicle’s driving range as well as add more vehicles to the active fleet. They plan to release up to 10 vehicles in 2025 alone.
With Aurora and Waymo, drivers behind the wheel are lessening in Texas.
This is especially true for Waymo, as they have been working with Uber. The Uber CEO said that, in Austin, Waymo’s driverless vehicles have been far more popular than vehicles with drivers. Many wonder if this is because they have proven to be more effective drivers or if because the innovation excites people to try the vehicle at least once. Some theorize that once the newness of autonomous vehicles dissipates, people will go back to human driven cars. For now, only time will tell.
