Aurora Innovation is expanding its self-driving truck operations across the US Sunbelt. The company now runs three autonomous trucks commercially between Dallas and Houston, logging over 20,000 driverless miles by the end of June. These trucks carry freight for clients like Uber Freight and Hirschbach Motor Lines, with human observers onboard who don’t intervene.
Aurora recently opened a terminal in Phoenix to support a 15-hour autonomous route from Fort Worth, Texas, to Phoenix. Trucks handle highway exits and surface streets near terminals located 1-5 miles from highways.
The key edge: Aurora’s trucks can operate at night, breaking the limits of traditional trucker hours. Drivers are capped at 11 hours of driving within a 14-hour window plus mandatory breaks; Aurora’s trucks don’t face those restrictions. 
CEO Chris Urmson said this night-driving ability stems from Aurora’s long-range lidar, detecting objects 450 meters away and spotting hazards up to 11 seconds earlier than a human driver. Aurora acquired lidar startups Blackmore (2019) and OURS Technology (2021) to build this tech.
Aurora is pushing to get its trucks driving reliably in rain too.
Chris Urmson stated:
“By the end of the year, we expect to be operating day, night, and in rain — if you can’t drive through the rain, ultimately, it’s hard to support these long operations because it’s raining somewhere,” he said.
Today, Aurora’s development fleet does operate in the rain and well enough that Urmson noted most would wonder why the company isn’t allowing its commercial trucks to do the same. Aurora has not completed the validation for that today, and “so we’re not willing to put that check mark next to it and let it go out there,” he noted.
This year is really about building the capability toolbox so that the vehicles can drive where they need to.
If rain hits on the Dallas-Houston route, trucks can detect conditions and pull off the road autonomously.
Aurora aims to scale from “tens of driverless trucks” on the road by year-end to “hundreds” by the end of 2026. The long-term goal: hauling freight coast to coast—from Miami to California.
Financially, Aurora is still deep in the red. Q2 revenue hit $1 million while net losses ballooned to $201 million.
Aurora’s big challenge: proving self-driving trucks can reliably operate anytime, anywhere to unlock profitable scale.
TechCrunch event
San Francisco | October 27-29, 2025
