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Cruise plans to launch driverless ride-hailing service in houston.

The California-based subsidiary of General Motors began operating autonomous ride-hailing early last year in San Francisco before expanding to Austin and Phoenix. Human-supervised test drives in Houston will start next week.

A driverless ride-hailing service is coming soon to Houston.

Cruise, a California-based subsidiary of General Motors, announced Wednesday that it will begin making test drives in Houston next week with a human supervisor behind the wheel. The plan is to launch a fully autonomous commercial service in the city within the next few months, according to a Wednesday tweet by Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt.

Cruise unveiled its driverless ride-hailing service early last year in its home city of San Francisco and expanded to Austin and Phoenix by the end of 2022. The company needed about three months' worth of testing in each of the latter cities, according to Cruise spokesperson Tiffany Testo, who said test runs will begin in Dallas shortly after they start in Houston.

"This phase that you'll see kicking off here in Houston is our supervised driving, which allows us to finetune," Testo said. "Every city is different and they have nuances. It's just a matter of making sure our technology is ready for public roads and rides."

A small number of driverless vehicles, used primarily to make food deliveries and haul cargo, have been on Houston-area roads in recent years, first through partnerships between robotics startup Nuro and companies such as Kroger . Last August, Kodiak Robotics began using self-driving 18-wheelers to transport IKEA products between the Houston and Dallas areas, and Aurora Innovation, Inc., announced earlier this year that it plans to launch an autonomous freight-hauling service between Houston and Dallas by the end of 2024.

Testo said the mission of Cruise, which was founded in 2013 and has raised a total of $10 billion in capital commitments from companies such as GM, Honda, Microsoft and Walmart, is to "improve road safety, reduce emissions and reduce congestion." It has a fleet of about 300 electric vehicles powered by renewable energy, according to Testo.

The entire fleet was recalled for a software update in late March after a Cruise vehicle rear-ended a city bus in San Francisco, with Vogt writing in an April 7 blog post that the crash caused no injuries and the autonomous car was traveling about 10 mph at the time. Reuters reported last month that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened a safety probe into Cruise's driverless system in December after receiving incident reports that Cruise vehicles "may engage in inappropriately hard braking or become immobilized."

Testo said she did not immediately know how many collisions Cruise vehicles have been involved in since its commercial service launched early last year in San Francisco, but acknowledged there have been crashes that in some cases have caused minor injuries to passengers.

"We're really proud of our safety record," she said. "We've driven just about at the 2 million mark of driverless miles with passengers and have no major injuries or fatalities."

Cruise's driverless ride-hailing service, which can be secured through an app, operates continually in San Francisco and only at night in Austin and Phoenix, with Testo saying there typically is more of a demand for the service at night. Cruise cars also are making autonomous deliveries in Phoenix through a partnership with Walmart.

It has not been determined when exactly the ride-hailing service will initially operate in Houston, or where exactly in the city it will be available, according to Testo, who said the cost of the service varies by market. In San Francisco, she said the base price for a driverless ride is $5, and passengers are then charged per mile and per minute while taking an optimal route.

"On the whole, we are priced competitively for what you would pay for traditional ride-hail," Testo said.

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Exclusive: first self-driving car service for passengers launches in houston.

For the first time, Houstonians can hail an autonomous vehicle to get from point A to point B, thanks to a tech company's latest market roll out.

San Francisco-based Cruise , which has launched in its hometown, Phoenix, and Austin over the past year and a half, previously announced Houston and Dallas as the company's next stops . Dallas, where Cruise is currently undergoing testing, will roll out its service by the end of the year.

As of today, October 12, Houstonians in the Downtown, Midtown, East Downtown, Montrose, Hyde Park, and River Oaks neighborhoods can hail a ride from an autonomous electric vehicle seven days a week between the hours of 9 pm to 6 am.

"We believe that everyone has a right to safer, more accessible and more affordable transportation, and we remain focused on cities first because that’s where our mission will have the greatest impact. Houston follows that city-first strategy with its densely traversed downtown, propensity for ridehail, and vibrant cultural center," Sola Lawal, Cruise's Houston manager, tells InnovationMap. "Cruise also shares in Houston’s Vision Zero mission to end traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2030 and we’re excited to address the transportation needs of Houston communities."

Although today marks the launch to the public, Cruise's employees and their friends and family have been testing out the service since August.

"People love this shift from working for your car as the driver, to the car working for you and the time this gives people back in their days," he explains. "A common reaction from first time riders starts with people being shocked and awed for the first two minutes then the ride becomes so normal that you forget you're in a driverless car."

Founded in 2013 by CEO, CTO, and President Kyle Vogt and Chief Product Officer Dan Kan, Cruise vehicles have self-driven over 5 million miles — 1 million of those miles were cruised on Texas streets. The company's fleet includes 400 electric vehicles powered by renewable energy.

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Cruise's plan for Houston is to launch and grow from there, including launching larger passenger vehicles, the Origin fleet, for bigger groups of people.

"We always start small and methodically expand from there. For us it’s all about safety and how we expand in partnership with communities, so we let that be our guide for expansion vs arbitrary timelines," Lawal says. "Our goal is to continue to expand as quickly and safely as possible so we can get folks to the Rodeo when it starts and back home, anywhere in Houston, when it ends. You can expect expanded map areas, increased supply of AVs, and expanded hours until we are 24/7 across Houston."

Cruise has raised $10 billion in capital commitments from investors, including General Motors, Honda, Microsoft, T. Rowe Price, Walmart, and others. Additionally, the tech company has also a $5 billion credit line with GM Financial, giving it the financial support needed to scale. Strategically aligned with General Motors and Honda, Cruise has fully integrated manufacturing at scale.

Cruise, which touts a pricing model competitive to existing rideshares, is launching with $5 flat-rate rides for passengers.

"Houstonians who ride with us have the chance to be part of history in the making," Lawal tells Houston's to-be Cruise riders. "The industry has made incredible progress in the last two years but we are still in the early days of what’s to come as driverless ridehail becomes a reality for more people.

"We are proud of the service we’ve built so far and the safety record we have to show for it, but will always continue to improve. We're excited to launch with the community of Houston and we simply ask that you give it a try," he continues. "And when you do please give us feedback, we’d love to hear about your experience."

• Volvo's self-driving tech company opens Texas office, announces Dallas-Houston freight ›
• Self-driving semi trucks are now hauling cargo in and out of Houston ›
• IKEA to test self-driving deliveries between Houston and Dallas ›
• Self-driving rideshare company cruises its robotaxies into Houston ›
• New self-driving car service from San Francisco officially cruises into Texas ›

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Cruise robotaxi service to expand to Dallas, Houston in 2023

Cruise, a self-driving technology company majority owned by General Motors, will expand its fledgling robotaxi service to two more U.S. cities in the coming months, CEO Kyle Vogt said last week in a Twitter post .

He said Cruise robotaxis with a supervisor behind the wheel will start driving in Dallas and Houston within days, and that the service will go live in the next few months.

Cruise's robotaxi service was launched in early 2022 in San Francisco, where the company is headquartered, and quickly expanded to Austin and Phoenix later that year.

While the service now operates around the clock in San Francisco, in other areas it is limited in the hours it can operate. It also is limited to routes that minimize risky maneuvers, like pulling out into traffic. The service will likely also be rolled out in a limited fashion in the new cities.

Tweet by Kyle Vogt on May 10, 2023

The robotaxis are still based on the Chevrolet Bolt EV, though Cruise plans to eventually add a dedicated vehicle known as the Origin , prototypes for which are being tested.

Cruise's self-driving system ranks at Level 4 on the SAE scale of self-driving capability , as it is limited in areas in which it operate. The final goal is Level 5, where a self-driving car is able to operate at the same level as a human.

While Level 5 might be a decade or more away, a handful of companies are already offering commercial services involving Level 4 cars. In addition to Cruise, Waymo has been running a robotaxi service in Phoenix and San Francisco for the past few years, and is currently testing the service in Los Angeles . Meanwhile, China's Baidu continues to expand its Apollo Go service in Chinese cities.

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Cruise Robotaxis Entering More Cities

Cruise has slowly been expanding its network of robotaxis and their availability in certain markets. Though, it’s been a long time since the company entered new cities … until now. Cruise is now coming to Houston and Dallas.

While Cruise vehicles will be fully self driving and operate even without safety drivers in other markets, for some period of time, they will include safety drivers in Dallas and Houston.

If you’re in one of the cities where Cruise operates — San Francisco, Austin, Dallas, Houston, or Phoenix — you can try to start using Cruise robotaxis by getting on the company’s waitlist . It’s not open to everyone yet.

We’ll start supervised driving in Houston in the coming days, with Dallas to follow shortly thereafter. Be sure to join our waitlist to be amongst the first to experience driverless rides: https://t.co/0d4QmeyRiV — cruise (@Cruise) May 10, 2023

Cruise’s progress has been a bit of a “two steps forward, one step backward” situation. Back in June of 2022, Cruise became the first robotaxi company to offer autonomous rides for a fare (not just for free), but a month later, it was making headlines for clogging up streets in San Francisco . Toward the end of 2022, Cruise expanded massively in the San Francisco region . In December, Cruise launched in Austin, Texas . (I actually snapped the pics of Cruise vehicles in Austin, above and below, in November as they were getting settled there.)

That was two steps forward, so we must be at one step back next, right? Indeed. “In January, San Francisco’s Transportation Authority asked regulators to  limit or temporarily pause Cruise and competitor Waymo’s expansion, citing repeated cases of their cars inexplicably stopping in traffic and blocking emergency vehicles,” Engadget reports. But that’s no reason to stop the fun train. “As of yet, things have done anything but slow down. Since the request, Cruise celebrated one million fully driverless miles  on top of making its  robotaxis available at all times in San Francisco — though full access is only for employees.”

Unfortunately, you can’t just grab a Cruise robotaxi in Houston and Dallas now. What we know is that it’s entering these markets, not when.

In case you haven’t been following along, Cruise robotaxis are considered Level 4 autonomous. They can operate 100% on their own within certain geographic boundaries or parameters. You can’t drop them in the desert and ask them to get you to the nearest Starbucks. (Well, I guess Phoenix is sort of the desert … but anyway.)

One thing that crossed my mind while uploading these pictures is that these robotaxis have been based on an electric car model that is being discontinued , the Chevy Bolt . What will Cruise turn to next? One possibility is the Cruise Origin , a robotaxi-tailored vehicle that’s been in development for years, first unveiled in January 2020 .

Aside from delivering humans to their desired destinations, Cruise is inching into the actual delivery business as well. “Cruise is also working on expansion of its autonomous vehicles into delivery services,” GM Authority writes. “Autonomous vehicle units equipped with a locker to securely carry groceries or other delivery payloads have been reported. Major retail chain Walmart is investing in the technology, with eight stores currently participating in testing.”

What’s next in Cruise news? We’ll see, and we’ll let you know.

Cruise aims to earn $1 billion in annual revenue by 2025. Can it do that?

On the technical side of things, you can explore Cruise’s April 2023 release notes here .

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Cruise pauses all driverless robotaxi operations to ‘rebuild public trust’

Cruise said Thursday evening it has paused all driverless operations, a decision that comes just two days after the California Department of Motor Vehicles suspended Cruise’s deployment and driverless testing permits effectively ending its robotaxi operations in the state.

The action means that driverless operations in Austin, Houston and Phoenix where the company was charging for rides, has ended. Cruise has also ended driverless operations in Miami, where just yesterday the company had quietly launched, according to sources familiar with the company’s activities.

Cruise said in a post on social media site X that it will take time to examine its “ processes, systems, and tools and reflect on how we can better operate in a way that will earn public trust.” The GM self-driving subsidiary said it was taking the action to rebuild public trust and added it was not related to any new on-road incidents.

Cruise said it will continue with supervised autonomous vehicle operations, which means that a human safety operator will be behind the wheel.

“We think it’s the right thing to do during a period when we need to be extra vigilant when it comes to risk, relentlessly focused on safety, & taking steps to rebuild public trust,” the company posted.

Cruise’s decision is an about face to internal communications with its employees during an all-hands meeting held Wednesday afternoon, according to sources. In that meeting, co-founder and CEO Kyle Vogt told staff the company had not paused operations elsewhere besides California and gave no indication that the company was planning to. Instead, Vogt told employees the company was re-evaluating how it discloses information to regulators to ensure it is clearly communicated, according to account from sources who heard the call.

The California DMV suspended Cruise’s permits on October 23 about three weeks after an incident that left a pedestrian, who had been hit by a human-driven vehicle that fled the scene, stuck under a Cruise robotaxi. The Cruise vehicle was in the adjacent lane. DMV was already investigating Cruise and had forced the company to reduce its fleet by 50% following a collision in August with an emergency vehicle.

The DMV said in its order of suspension that it took the action after learning that Cruise had withheld video footage from its investigation into the October 2 event. DMV said Cruise showed it video footage of the accident captured by the AV’s onboard cameras, which ended with the robotaxi’s initial stop  following a hard-braking maneuver. The agency said it later learned there was additional footage that showed the AV then attempting a pullover  maneuver while the pedestrian was underneath the vehicle. The AV traveled about 20 feet and reached a speed of 7 miles per hour before coming to a complete and final stop, the DMV said. 

Cruise has repeatedly insisted that it did show the DMV the entire footage, but conceded that it could have been better about providing a detailed explanation about what happened. The DMV has told TechCrunch it stands by its assessment.

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G.M.’s Cruise Moved Fast in the Driverless Race. It Got Ugly.

Cruise has hired a law firm to investigate how it responded to regulators, as its cars sit idle and questions grow about its C.E.O.’s expansion plans.

By Tripp Mickle ,  Cade Metz and Yiwen Lu

Tripp Mickle, Cade Metz and Yiwen Lu have been reporting throughout the year on the rollout of robot taxis in San Francisco.

Two months ago, Kyle Vogt, the chief executive of Cruise, choked up as he recounted how a driver had killed a 4-year-old girl in a stroller at a San Francisco intersection. “It barely made the news,” he said, pausing to collect himself. “Sorry. I get emotional.”

To make streets safer, he said in an interview, cities should embrace self-driving cars like those designed by Cruise, a subsidiary of General Motors. They do not get distracted, drowsy or drunk, he said, and being programmed to put safety first meant they could substantially reduce car-related fatalities.

Now Mr. Vogt’s driverless car company faces its own safety concerns as he contends with angry regulators, anxious employees, and skepticism about his management and the viability of a business that he has often said will save lives while generating billions of dollars.

On Oct. 2, a car hit a woman in a San Francisco intersection and flung her into the path of one of Cruise’s driverless taxis . The Cruise car ran over her, briefly stopped and then dragged her some 20 feet before pulling to the curb, causing severe injuries.

California’s Department of Motor Vehicles last week accused Cruise of omitting the dragging of the woman from a video of the incident it initially provided to the agency. The D.M.V. said the company had “misrepresented” its technology and told Cruise to shut down its driverless car operations in the state.

Two days later, Cruise went further and voluntarily suspended all of its driverless operations around the country, taking 400 or so driverless cars off the road. Since then, Cruise’s board has hired the law firm Quinn Emanuel to investigate the company’s response to the incident, including its interactions with regulators, law enforcement and the media.

The board plans to evaluate the findings and any recommended changes. Exponent, a consulting firm that evaluates complex software systems, is conducting a separate review of the crash, said two people who attended a companywide meeting at Cruise on Monday.

Cruise employees worry that there is no easy way to fix the company’s problems, said five former and current employees and business partners, while its rivals fear Cruise’s issues could lead to tougher driverless car rules for all of them.

Company insiders are putting the blame for what went wrong on a tech industry culture — led by the 38-year-old Mr. Vogt — that put a priority on the speed of the program over safety. In the competition between Cruise and its top driverless car rival, Waymo, Mr. Vogt wanted to dominate in the same way Uber dominated its smaller ride-hailing competitor, Lyft.

“Kyle is a guy who is willing to take risks, and he is willing to move quickly. He is very Silicon Valley,” said Matthew Wansley, a professor at the Cardozo School of Law in New York who specializes in emerging automotive technologies. “That both explains the success of Cruise and its mistakes.”

When Mr. Vogt spoke to the company about its suspended operations on Monday, he said that he did not know when they could start again and that layoffs could be coming, according to two employees who attended the companywide meeting.

He acknowledged that Cruise had lost the public’s trust, the employees said, and outlined a plan to win it back by being more transparent and putting more emphasis on safety. He named Louise Zhang, vice president of safety, as the company’s interim chief safety officer and said she would report directly to him.

“Trust is one of those things that takes a long time to build and just seconds to lose,” Mr. Vogt said, according to attendees. “We need to get to the bottom of this and start rebuilding that trust.”

Cruise declined to make Mr. Vogt available for an interview. G.M. said in a statement that its “commitment to Cruise with the goal of commercialization remains steadfast.” It said it believed in the company’s mission and technology and supported its steps to put safety first.

Mr. Vogt began working on self-driving cars as a teenager. When he was 13, he programmed a Power Wheels ride-on toy car to follow the yellow line in a parking lot. He later participated in a government-sponsored self-driving car competition while studying at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In 2013, he started Cruise Automation. The company retrofitted conventional cars with sensors and computers to operate autonomously on highways. He sold the business three years later to G.M. for $1 billion .

After the deal closed, Dan Ammann, G.M.’s president, took over as Cruise’s chief executive, and Mr. Vogt became its president and chief technology officer.

As president, Mr. Vogt built out Cruise’s engineering team while the company expanded to about 2,000 employees from 40, former employees said. He championed bringing cars to as many markets as fast as possible, believing that the speedier the company moved, the more lives it would save, former employees said.

In 2021, Mr. Vogt took over as chief executive. Mary T. Barra, G.M.’s chief executive, began including Mr. Vogt on earnings calls and presentations, where he hyped the self-driving market and predicted that Cruise would have one million cars by 2030.

Mr. Vogt pressed his company to continue its aggressive expansion, learning from problems its cars ran into while driving in San Francisco. The company charged an average of $10.50 per ride in the city.

After a Cruise vehicle collided with a Toyota Prius driving in a bus lane last summer, some people at the company proposed having its vehicles temporarily avoid streets with bus lanes, former employees said. But Mr. Vogt vetoed that idea, saying Cruise’s vehicles needed to continue to drive those streets to master their complexity. The company later changed its software to reduce the risk of similar accidents.

In August, a Cruise driverless car collided with a San Francisco fire truck that was responding to an emergency. The company later changed the way its cars detect sirens .

But after the crash, city officials and activists pressured the state to slow Cruise’s expansion. They also called on Cruise to provide more data about collisions, including documentation of unplanned stops, traffic violations and vehicle performance, said Aaron Peskin, president of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors.

“Cruise’s corporate behavior over time has increasingly led to a lack of trust,” Mr. Peskin said.

With its business frozen, there are concerns that Cruise is becoming too much of a financial burden on G.M. and is hurting the auto giant’s reputation. Ms. Barra told investors that Cruise had “tremendous opportunity to grow” just hours before California’s D.MV. told Cruise to shut down its driverless operations.

Cruise has not collected fares or ferried riders in more than a week. In San Francisco, Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, Miami, and Austin, Texas, hundreds of Cruise’s white and orange Chevrolet Bolts sit stagnant. The shutdown complicates Cruise’s ambition of hitting its goal of $1 billion of revenue in 2025.

G.M. has spent an average of $588 million a quarter on Cruise over the past year, a 42 percent increase from a year ago. Each Chevrolet Bolt that Cruise operates costs $150,000 to $200,000, according to a person familiar with its operations.

Half of Cruise’s 400 cars were in San Francisco when the driverless operations were stopped. Those vehicles were supported by a vast operations staff, with 1.5 workers per vehicle. The workers intervened to assist the company’s vehicles every 2.5 to five miles, according to two people familiar with is operations. In other words, they frequently had to do something to remotely control a car after receiving a cellular signal that it was having problems.

To cover its spiraling costs, G.M. will need to inject or raise more funds for the business, said Chris McNally, a financial analyst at Evercore ISI. During a call with analysts in late October, Ms. Barra said G.M. would share its funding plans before the end of the year.

Tripp Mickle reports on Apple and Silicon Valley for The Times and is based in San Francisco. His focus on Apple includes product launches, manufacturing issues and political challenges. He also writes about trends across the tech industry, including layoffs, generative A.I. and robot taxis.  More about Tripp Mickle

Cade Metz is a technology reporter and the author of “Genius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought A.I. to Google, Facebook, and The World.” He covers artificial intelligence, driverless cars, robotics, virtual reality and other emerging areas. More about Cade Metz

Yiwen Lu reports on technology for The New York Times. More about Yiwen Lu

Driverless Cars and the Future of Transportation

Autonomous taxis have arrived in car-obsessed Los Angeles, the nation’s second most populous city. But some Angelenos aren’t ready to go driverless .

Cruise, the embattled self-driving car subsidiary of General Motors,  said that it would eliminate roughly a quarter of its work force , as the company looked to rein in costs after an incident led California regulators to shut down its robot taxi operations.

Tesla, the world’s dominant maker of electric vehicles, recalled more than two million vehicles  to address concerns from U.S. officials about Autopilot , the company’s self-driving software.

An Appetite for Destruction: A wave of lawsuits argue that Tesla’s Autopilot software is dangerously overhyped. What can its blind spots teach us about Elon Musk, the company’s erratic chief executive ?

Along for the Ride: Here’s what New York Times reporters experienced during test rides in driverless cars operated by Tesla , Waymo  and Cruise .

The Future of Transportation?: Driverless cars, once a Silicon Valley fantasy, have become a 24-hour-a-day reality in San Francisco . “The Daily” looked at the unique challenges of coexisting with cars that drive themselves .

Stressing Cities: In San Francisco and Austin, Texas, where passengers can hail autonomous taxis, the vehicles are starting to take a toll on city services , even slowing down emergency response times.

A Fast Rise and Fall: Cruise, a subsidiary of General Motors, wanted to grow fast. Now, the company faces safety concerns  as it contends with angry regulators, anxious employees and skepticism about the viability of the business .

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Self-driving startup cruise raises $2.75 billion from walmart, others.

By Hyunjoo Jin

San Francisco (Reuters) - Self-drive automaker Cruise, backed by General Motors Co, on Thursday said it raised $2.75 billion in its latest funding round with additional investment from Walmart Inc and others, taking the startup's valuation over $30 billion.

The announcement comes a week after peer TuSimple revealed plans for an initial public offering (IPO), at a time when self-drive technology is yet to be commercialised.

"We are focused on our path to commercialization right now but the IPOs happening in the space right now are a great indication of the strength of the industry and the opportunity self-driving presents," a Cruise spokeswoman said in a statement to Reuters.

In January, the San Francisco-based startup said Microsoft Corp would join General Motors, Japan's Honda Motor Co Ltd and institutional investors for a combined new equity investment of over $2 billion.

On Monday, Cruise said it planned to begin deploying a limited number of its Origin vehicles for ride-hail services in Dubai from 2023, its first overseas commercial service.

"Cruise is executing a global strategy with the right partners," said Grayson Brulte, president at consultancy Brulte & Co. "At the end of the day it will come down to who can cut the best deals which long-term generate revenue and profits."

Cruise's relationship with Walmart includes a trial delivery service in Scottsdale, Arizona, announced in November.

(Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by Christopher Cushing)

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Why Cruise robotaxis no longer roam central Austin

The GM-owned company had been operating its driverless vehicles in a handful of U.S. cities, but safety concerns led them to suspend those operations.

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Michael Minasi / KUT

A parked self-driving car from Cruise is pictured at the University of Texas at Austin campus on Aug. 10, 2023.

Autonomous ride-hailing company, Cruise, is no longer operating on Texas roads . The GM-owned driverless taxi startup had offered rides in central Austin, using a fleet of electric Chevy Bolts, with no human driver at the wheel.

Cruise had just expanded operations to Houston and was testing vehicles in Dallas. But an injury by a Cruise taxi to a pedestrian and traffic blockages in San Francisco led California regulators to order the cars off that state’s streets. Then Cruise announced it would pause all commercial operations, ending the Austin and Houston experiments for now.

Dan Solomon wrote about Cruise for the Texas Monthly and joined Texas Standard to discuss. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.

This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:

Texas Standard: In San Francisco, Cruise have been operating driverless taxis for a number of months, and there were a lot of stories about blocked traffic, injuries and a more broad backlash against Cruise. How have things be going in Texas?

Dan Solomon: Well, they’ve been generally okay, but not great. The way I’d describe it, they didn’t cause any accidents that I’m aware of. But they did certainly inconvenience a lot of people, you know, and they kind of freak people out, too.

They took over a stretch of West Campus one night after a UT game. They would occasionally just kind of pick a intersection or a neighborhood to converge on. And it’s weird.

So, you know, people didn’t love it, but there weren’t any serious problems. But there were enough that, you know, made people feel uncomfortable.

I gather that cities in Texas are barred from regulating robotaxis like Cruise. Why is that? 

Because the Legislature passed a bill, I think it was in 2017, that basically kept that authority with the state and the state hasn’t really used that authority. They didn’t force Cruise to leave the way that California did or anything.

You point out that autonomous taxis aren’t just a utopian ideal. I mean, for folks with disabilities, for example, they could be life changing.

Yeah, it’s complicated.

You know, I went into this pretty skeptical of the technology, of the necessity for it. And then as I started looking into it and started considering like, well shoot, my wife has a vision disability that keeps her from driving. You know, this would be great for her. It feels safer than an Uber. You know, it’d be cheaper. So that would be nice.

You know, I don’t know that that would work for everybody who’s not in our situation, being in Austin and, you know, a city that has them and that doesn’t have to travel that far, but it would be really nice.

So I’m interested in it. Like I’m less skeptical than I was before I started reporting on it. But, you know, I also think it’s a complicated thing.

» RELATED: How an AI system beating a video game could lead to better autonomous vehicles

Less skeptical since before you started reporting on it, and yet Cruise itself says it needs to rebuild confidence. And I’m wondering if your confidence has been shaken, given some of these reports of Cruise vehicles being seen going the wrong way down city streets – you know, without an accident. But it’s not just a few. There’s quite a few, actually.

Basically, I’m freaked out by them until I start thinking about how bad the average human driver is. And then it kind of changes my perspective on it.

In a vacuum, yeah, these things don’t work as well as they should. I don’t know that they ever will. So I’m not sure that, you know, local commuting in driverless cars – at least interacting with humans the way that they have to on city streets – I don’t know if that’s possible.

But I also know that what we have right now isn’t really acceptable either because pedestrians, cyclists, they’re killed all the time by human drivers who maybe drive the wrong way. You know, human drivers drive the wrong way down city streets, too. At least a car is never going to be texting. It’s never going to be drunk.

Have state regulators or cities talked about making changes to the rules that Cruise and its competitors operate under here in Texas?

Not that I’m aware of here in Texas, no. And even outside of Texas, it’s a pretty limited toolkit of things you can do, or at least that anyone’s discussed, for how to regulate them.

You know, you can have a human driver, like a safety driver, who doesn’t actually steer but is still in the car, or you can not. You know, you can limit the numbers of them on the roads, but you can’t make the technology better in a regulatory way.

Where do you think this leaves autonomous driving for now? I mean, we’re talking about driverless taxis, but the idea is to expand this into more commercial spaces.

I think that that’s really the future of this. I think that we’re going to see it more like long haul trucks because highways are much easier, much safer to drive on. There aren’t the same number of variables that there are on city streets. Everything’s pretty much moving at the same speed. Everything’s pretty much moving in the same direction. And there aren’t going to be people or cyclists or pedestrians.

» RELATED: Aurora’s self-driving semis aim to be on Texas highways by 2024

The way that it was described to me by an expert at Texas A&M, he’s really thoughtful about this, is that about 90% of the technology is there for driverless cars, and the other 10% is really, really hard to get. And that’s less of a concern on the highways. So I could see it being, you know, something that we see in trucks pretty quickly.

I don’t think we’re going to see huge fleets of robo taxis anytime soon. But I do think we might see, you know, a significant percentage of trucks on the highway in five years be autonomous and not really think about it.

If you found the reporting above valuable, please consider making a donation to support it  here . Your gift helps pay for everything you find on  texasstandard.org  and  KUT.org . Thanks for donating today.

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Texas Standard for Nov. 7, 2023: What’s next after Cruise suspends self-driving cars in Texas?

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Aurora opens driverless trucking route in Texas amid autonomous jitters

Dallas and houston hubs comes as cruise suspends robotaxis and teamsters protest.

Aurora Innovation has christened the nation’s first commercial autonomous freight route between Dallas and Houston. But its timing could have been better.

“With this corridor’s launch, we’ve defined, refined, and validated the framework for the expansion of our network with the largest partner ecosystem in the autonomous trucking industry,” Sterling Anderson, an Aurora co-founder and chief product officer, said in a news release.

The choice of the Interstate 45 route was expected. Aurora has created autonomous terminals to launch and land driverless trucks in Palmer, Texas, located south of Dallas, and in Houston.

Inauspicious timing

The announcement comes after robotaxi maker Cruise Automation last Friday suspended operations in Austin, Texas, because of complaints about traffic delays caused by the intentionally cautious driverless cars. On Oct. 24, California suspended Cruise’s autonomous vehicle deployment and driverless testing permits after accidents and traffic tie-ups in San Francisco. 

California Gov. Gavin Newsom in September vetoed a Teamsters-backed bill that would have effectively banned heavy-duty autonomous trucking. California still requires safety drivers to monitor autonomous functions. Most companies pursued commercial trucking software and hardware testing and pilot operations in autonomy-friendly Texas. 

The Teamsters continue to protest against autonomous cars in California while stepping up anti-autonomy protests in Texas.

“Lawmakers in Austin should recognize that their voters do not want to be on the road with driverless cars or trucks,” Brent Taylor, Teamsters Southern Region vice president and secretary-treasurer of Local 745, said in a letter to Texas legislators. “We call on the legislature to seize the opportunity to pass a bill requiring human operators in all commercial vehicles.”

The compoany declined to comment on the Cruise suspension or the Teamsters.

Aurora pushes toward driver-out in 2024

Aurora is the first to name the freight-dense corridor for hub-to-hub operations ahead of planned driver-out commercial freight runs on I-45 as soon as late 2024. It currently operates 75 autonomous runs a week with safety drivers. Terminals for launching and landing autonomous trucks are up and running in the two hubs.

Rival Kodiak Robotics also has terminal operations in Texas. Both Aurora and Kodiak foresee more lucrative longer routes — from Fort Worth to El Paso for Aurora and Houston to Atlanta for Kodiak.

Aurora’s commercial-ready terminals house, maintain, prepare, inspect and deploy autonomous trucks between destinations. Its terminal blueprint maximizes the time autonomous freight-hauling trucks are on the road.

For example, on-site weigh stations ensure Aurora’s trucks comply with regulatory standards while allowing them to bypass on-road inspection sites. That results in a more efficient trip with fewer stops. Human drivers bring trailers of freight to one of the hubs where other human drivers pick up the loads for delivery to distribution centers or other final destinations.

“Bringing our commercial-ready terminals and services online a year ahead of our planned commercial driverless launch between Dallas and Houston enables us to focus next year on integrating our driver-ready trucks into our customer’s operations,” Anderson said.

Aurora is also preparing its command center to support around-the-clock commercial operations. Remote specialists monitor and provide guidance to Aurora-powered trucks. Dispatchers allocate trucks, trailers and vehicle operators to missions.

Related articles:

Aurora Innovation raises $820M in fresh capital

Aurora points to driverless trucks in Texas in 2024 

Continental will build autonomous hardware for Aurora Innovation

Click for more FreightWaves articles by Alan Adler.

truck123443

wont last this is about as dumb as craig fuller LOL

Robot Trucker

When you consider all the freight that is soon to be coming from those offshored American factories in Mexico, Texas is the obvious choice to be pioneering autonomous trucks since there will be an obvious shortage of truck drivers in the area. Once they can demonstrate it works there, it’s only a matter of time before it spreads into other states.

Stephen webster

We should not allow driverless trucks They can hacked with a $50 000 computer

One must remember that an autonomous truck is only as good as the programming it is using, and that can be hacked or get corrupted. Do you want to be driving on a road that has an 80,000-pound semi with no driver on board? I do not trust a computer to never screw up, especially when other lives are at stake if it has a problem or the road conditions change, and there is no program to compensate for it. Plus, this company wants to take jobs away from humans, and a human brain is a lot faster than any computer program, doesn’t have program glitches, and doesn’t require a battery to operate.

Comments are closed.

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Tractor-trailers with no one aboard the future is near for self-driving trucks on us roads.

Tom Krisher

Associated Press

Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved

A self-driving tractor trailer maneuvers around a test track in Pittsburgh, Thursday, March 14, 2024. The truck is owned by Pittsburgh-based Aurora Innovation Inc. Late this year, Aurora plans to start hauling freight on Interstate 45 between the Dallas and Houston areas with 20 driverless trucks. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

PITTSBURGH – On a three-lane test track along the Monongahela River, an 18-wheel tractor-trailer rounded a curve. No one was on board.

A quarter-mile ahead, the truck's sensors spotted a trash can blocking one lane and a tire in another. In less than a second, it signaled, moved into the unobstructed lane and rumbled past the obstacles.

Recommended Videos

The self-driving semi, outfitted with 25 laser, radar and camera sensors, is owned by Pittsburgh-based Aurora Innovation. Late this year, Aurora plans to start hauling freight on Interstate 45 between the Dallas and Houston areas with 20 driverless trucks.

Within three or four years, Aurora and its competitors expect to put thousands such self-driving trucks on America's public freeways. The goal is for the trucks, which can run nearly around the clock without any breaks, to speed the flow of goods, accelerating delivery times and perhaps lowering costs. They'll travel short distances on secondary roads, too.

The companies say the autonomous trucks will save on fuel, too, because they don't have to stop and will drive at more consistent speeds. Also, Aurora says its testing has shown that if a maintenance issue arises while one of its trucks is traveling on a freeway, the vehicle will automatically pull to the side of the road and remotely call for assistance.

The image of a fully loaded, 80,000-pound driverless truck weaving around cars on a super-highway at 65 mph or more may strike a note of terror. A poll conducted in January by AAA found that a decisive majority of American drivers — 66% — said they would fear riding in an autonomous vehicle.

But in less than nine months, a seven-year science experiment by Aurora will end, and driverless trucks will start carrying loads between terminals for FedEx, Uber Freight, Werner and other partners. Aurora and most of its rivals plan to start running freight routes in Texas, where snow and ice are generally rare.

For years, it seemed as though the initial venture for autonomous vehicles would be ride hailing in large cities. But General Motors’ Cruise robotaxi unit is struggling in the aftermath of a serious crash. And Alphabet's Waymo faces opposition to expanding its autonomous ride service in California. The result is that self-driving trucks are poised to become the first computer-controlled vehicles deployed in widespread numbers on public roads.

The vehicles have drawn skepticism from safety advocates, who warn that with almost no federal regulation, it will be mainly up to the companies themselves to determine when the semis are safe enough to operate without humans on board. The critics complain that federal agencies, including the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, take a generally passive approach to safety, typically acting only after crashes occur. And most states provide scant regulation.

But Aurora and other companies that are developing the systems argue that years of testing show that their trucks will actually be safer than human-driven ones. They note that the vehicles' laser and radar sensors can “see” farther than human eyes can. The trucks never tire, as human drivers do. They never become distracted or impaired by alcohol or drugs.

“We want to be out there with thousands or tens of thousands of trucks on the road,” said Chris Urmson, Aurora's CEO and formerly head of Google’s autonomous vehicle operations. "And to do that, we have to be safe. It’s the only way that the public will accept it. Frankly, it’s the only way our customers will accept it.”

Phil Koopman, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who studies vehicle automation safety, said he agreed that self-driving trucks can theoretically be safer than human-driven ones — for the very reason that they lack drivers who might become distracted or impaired. But he cautioned that the vehicles' computers inevitably will make errors. And just how the trucks will fare in real-world situations, he said, will depend on the quality of their safety engineering.

With billions of dollars in investments at stake, Koopman said, he wonders how the companies will balance safety decisions against cost concerns.

“Everything I see indicates they’re trying to do the right thing," he said. "But the devil is in the details.”

On the test track, reporters saw Aurora's semis avoid simulations of road obstacles, including pedestrians, a blown tire, even a horse. But the trucks were running at only 35 mph (56 kilometers per hour) in a controlled environment with nothing unexpected happening. (The trucks are being tested with human safety drivers on Texas freeways at speeds of 65 mph (105 kph) or higher.)

On the track, the trucks spotted obstacles more than a quarter-mile away and acted immediately to avoid them. Urmson said the trucks’ laser sensors can detect people walking on a highway at night, far beyond the distance of headlights.

Since 2021, Aurora trucks have autonomously hauled freight over 1 million miles on public highways — but with human safety drivers in the cabs. There have been only three crashes, Urmson said, all of them caused by mistakes by human drivers in other vehicles.

The crashes turned out to be minor, with no injuries. And in each case, the company said, the Aurora truck was able to safely pull to the side of the road.

A federal database that started in June 2021 shows at least 13 crashes with other vehicles involving autonomous semis, including three involving Aurora. In all the cases, the crashes were caused by other vehicles changing lanes or rear-ending the trucks. Sometimes, human safety drivers took over just before the crash.

Aurora won’t compromise safety, Urmson said, even if ensuring it might delay the timetable for achieving a profit.

“If we put a vehicle on the road that isn’t sufficiently safe — that we aren’t confident in the safety of — then it kills everything else,” he said.

Last month, when Urmson displayed the trucks to Wall Street analysts in Pittsburgh, he said the publicly held company expects to turn a profit by late 2027 or early 2028. To meet that goal, Aurora must succeed in putting thousands of the trucks on the roads, hauling freight from terminal to terminal and collecting a per-mile charge from customers.

The company's competitors — Plus.ai, Gatik, Kodiak Robotics and others — also plan soon to put driverless trucks on the roads hauling freight for customers. Gatik expects it to happen this year or next; the others haven't set timetables.

Don Burnette, CEO of Kodiak, said freeways are a better environment for autonomous vehicles than congested cities where ride-hailing robotaxis have been running. There are fewer pedestrians, and fewer unexpected things happen. Still, there are higher speeds and longer braking distances.

In testing on highways with human backup drivers, Burnette said, Kodiak has never experienced a crash in which its trucks were at fault.

“At the end of the day," Burnette said, “these trucks should be much safer than human drivers.”

Almost every year in the United States, a tractor-trailer plows into traffic that is stopped because of road construction, often causing deaths and injuries. By contrast, Burnette said, autonomous trucks pay attention all the time and are always watching 360 degrees.

Perhaps so. But at a Buc-ee's mega convenience store and gas station along Interstate 45 about 35 miles south of Dallas, the prospect of driverless semis struck a note of fear.

“It sounds like a disaster waiting to happen," said Kent Franz, a high school basketball coach in Chandler, Oklahoma, who was traveling to Houston for a wedding. "I’ve heard of the driverless cars — Tesla, what have you — and the accidents they’ve been having. Eighteen-wheelers? Something that heavy, relying on technology that has proven it can be faulty? Doesn’t sound very comfortable to me.”

Patti Pierce, a retired accountant from Plano, Texas, said she would be OK with the technology — in about a decade.

“I don't want to be on the road with them right now,” she said. "I like the gadgets in my car, but I’m not sure the technology is good enough right now to have a truck that drives itself.”

No federal regulations specifically cover autonomous vehicles, Koopman of Carnegie Mellon noted. Most states have no such regulations, either. Koopman said the automated-vehicle industry has persuaded many states to bar local governments from enacting such regulations. The result, he said, is that the public must trust the companies that are deploying autonomous semis.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, both part of the federal Department of Transportation, lack authority to stop autonomous vehicles from going on the roads. If something goes wrong, though, they can require recalls or order trucks out of service.

“You can't expect the government to protect you here," Koopman said. “The company’s going to decide when they think they’re safe, and the only thing the regulator is going to do is judge them after the fact.”

For the past five years, the motor carrier administration has been preparing safety standards for trucks with automated driving systems. The standards will govern inspections, maintenance and the remote monitoring of the trucks. But it's unclear when the rules will emerge from the regulatory process.

In the meantime, the autonomous semi companies say they can help address a truck driver shortage, estimated by the industry to amount to 64,000 drivers. Yet there also are worries that autonomous trucks eventually will supplant human drivers and cost them their livelihoods.

The Teamsters union, which represents about 600,000 drivers, most of them truckers, is pushing state legislatures to require human drivers to monitor the self-driving systems, contending that they are unsafe. A 2021 Transportation Department study concluded that the nationwide use of fully automated semis was years away, giving drivers time to transition to other transportation and logistics jobs that will be created.

Aurora's Urmson said he thinks driverless semis will complement the work already done by human drivers, because many more goods will have to be moved for a growing population.

“If you're driving a truck today," he said, “my expectation is you're going to be able to retire driving a truck.”

AP Business Writer David Koenig contributed to this report from Dallas and AP Data Journalist Aaron Kessler from Washington.

Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

Driverless trucks are coming to the road before fully self-driving Teslas, with autonomous semis arriving in Texas later this year

On a three-lane test track along the Monongahela River, an 18-wheel tractor-trailer rounded a curve. No one was on board.

A quarter-mile ahead, the truck’s sensors spotted a trash can blocking one lane and a tire in another. In less than a second, it signaled, moved into the unobstructed lane and rumbled past the obstacles.

The self-driving semi, outfitted with 25 laser, radar and camera sensors, is owned by Pittsburgh-based Aurora Innovation. Late this year, Aurora plans to start hauling freight on Interstate 45 between the Dallas and Houston areas with 20 driverless trucks.

Within three or four years, Aurora and its competitors expect to put thousands such self-driving trucks on America’s public freeways. The goal is for the trucks, which can run nearly around the clock without any breaks, to speed the flow of goods, accelerating delivery times and perhaps lowering costs. They’ll travel short distances on secondary roads, too.

The companies say the autonomous trucks will save on fuel, too, because they don’t have to stop and will drive at more consistent speeds.

The image of a fully loaded, 80,000-pound driverless truck weaving around cars on a super-highway at 65 mph or more may strike a note of terror. A poll conducted in January by AAA found that a decisive majority of Americans — 66% — said they would fear riding in an autonomous vehicle.

But in less than nine months, a seven-year science experiment by Aurora will end, and driverless trucks will start carrying loads between terminals for FedEx , Uber Freight, Werner and other partners. Aurora and most of its rivals plan to start running freight routes in Texas, where snow and ice are generally rare.

For years, it seemed as though the initial venture for autonomous vehicles would be ride hailing in large cities. But General Motors’  Cruise robotaxi unit  is struggling in the aftermath of a serious crash. And Alphabet’s Waymo faces opposition to expanding its autonomous ride service in California. The result is that self-driving trucks are poised to become the first computer-controlled vehicles deployed in widespread numbers on public roads.

The vehicles have drawn skepticism from safety advocates, who warn that with almost no federal regulation, it will be mainly up to the companies themselves to determine when the semis are safe enough to operate without humans on board. The critics complain that federal agencies, including the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, take a generally passive approach to safety, typically acting only after crashes occur. And most states provide scant regulation.

But Aurora and other companies that are developing the systems argue that years of testing show that their trucks will actually be safer than human-driven ones. They note that the vehicles’ laser and radar sensors can “see” farther than human eyes can. The trucks never tire, as human drivers do. They never become distracted or impaired by alcohol or drugs.

“We want to be out there with thousands or tens of thousands of trucks on the road,” said  Chris Urmson, Aurora’s CEO  and formerly head of Google’s autonomous vehicle operations. “And to do that, we have to be safe. It’s the only way that the public will accept it. Frankly, it’s the only way our customers will accept it.”

Phil Koopman, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who studies vehicle automation safety, said he agreed that self-driving trucks can theoretically be safer than human-driven ones — for the very reason that they lack drivers who might become distracted or impaired. But he cautioned that the vehicles’ computers inevitably will make errors. And just how the trucks will fare in real-world situations, he said, will depend on the quality of their safety engineering.

With billions of dollars in investments at stake, Koopman said, he wonders how the companies will balance safety decisions against cost concerns.

“Everything I see indicates they’re trying to do the right thing,” he said. “But the devil is in the details.”

On the test track, reporters saw Aurora’s semis avoid simulations of road obstacles, including pedestrians, a blown tire, even a horse. But the trucks were running at only 35 mph (56 kilometers per hour) in a controlled environment with nothing unexpected happening. (The trucks are being tested with human safety drivers on Texas freeways at speeds of 65 mph (105 kph) or higher.)

On the track, the trucks spotted obstacles more than a quarter-mile away and acted immediately to avoid them. Urmson said the trucks’ laser sensors can detect people walking on a highway at night, far beyond the distance of headlights.

Since 2021, Aurora trucks have autonomously hauled freight over 1 million miles on public highways — but with human safety drivers in the cabs. There have been only three crashes, Urmson said, all of them caused by mistakes by human drivers in other vehicles.

A federal database that started in June 2021 shows at least 13 crashes with other vehicles involving autonomous semis, including three involving Aurora. In all the cases, the crashes were caused by other vehicles changing lanes or rear-ending the trucks. Sometimes, human safety drivers took over just before the crash.

Aurora won’t compromise safety, Urmson said, even if ensuring it might delay the timetable for achieving a profit.

“If we put a vehicle on the road that isn’t sufficiently safe — that we aren’t confident in the safety of — then it kills everything else,” he said.

Last month, when Urmson displayed the trucks to Wall Street analysts in Pittsburgh, he said the publicly held company expects to turn a profit by late 2027 or early 2028. To meet that goal, Aurora must succeed in putting thousands of the trucks on the roads, hauling freight from terminal to terminal and collecting a per-mile charge from customers.

The company’s competitors — Plus.ai, Gatik, Kodiak Robotics and others — also plan soon to put driverless trucks on the roads hauling freight for customers. Gatik expects it to happen this year or next; the others haven’t set timetables.

Don Burnette, CEO of Kodiak, said freeways are a better environment for autonomous vehicles than congested cities where ride-hailing robotaxis have been running. There are fewer pedestrians, and fewer unexpected things happen. Still, there are higher speeds and longer braking distances.

In testing on highways with human backup drivers, Burnette said, Kodiak has never experienced a crash in which its trucks were at fault.

“At the end of the day,” Burnette said, “these trucks should be much safer than human drivers.”

Almost every year in the United States, a tractor-trailer plows into traffic that is stopped because of road construction, often causing deaths and injuries. By contrast, Burnette said, autonomous trucks pay attention all the time and are always watching 360 degrees.

Perhaps so. But at a Buc-ee’s mega convenience store and gas station along Interstate 45 about 35 miles south of Dallas, the prospect of driverless semis struck a note of fear.

“It sounds like a disaster waiting to happen,” said Kent Franz, a high school basketball coach in Chandler, Oklahoma, who was traveling to Houston for a wedding. “I’ve heard of the driverless cars — Tesla , what have you — and the accidents they’ve been having. Eighteen-wheelers? Something that heavy, relying on technology that has proven it can be faulty? Doesn’t sound very comfortable to me.”

Patti Pierce, a retired accountant from Plano, Texas, said she would be OK with the technology — in about a decade.

“I don’t want to be on the road with them right now,” she said. “I like the gadgets in my car, but I’m not sure the technology is good enough right now to have a truck that drives itself.”

No federal regulations specifically cover autonomous vehicles, Koopman of Carnegie Mellon noted. Most states have no such regulations, either. Koopman said the automated-vehicle industry has persuaded many states to bar local governments from enacting such regulations. The result, he said, is that the public must trust the companies that are deploying autonomous semis.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, both part of the federal Department of Transportation, lack authority to stop autonomous vehicles from going on the roads. If something goes wrong, though, they can require recalls or order trucks out of service.

“You can’t expect the government to protect you here,” Koopman said. “The company’s going to decide when they think they’re safe, and the only thing the regulator is going to do is judge them after the fact.”

For the past five years, the motor carrier administration has been preparing safety standards for trucks with automated driving systems. The standards will govern inspections, maintenance and the remote monitoring of the trucks. But it’s unclear when the rules will emerge from the regulatory process.

In the meantime, the autonomous semi companies say they can help address a truck driver shortage, estimated by the industry to amount to 64,000 drivers. Yet there also are worries that autonomous trucks eventually will supplant human drivers and cost them their livelihoods.

The Teamsters union, which represents about 600,000 drivers, most of them truckers, is pushing state legislatures to require human drivers to monitor the self-driving systems, contending that they are unsafe. A 2021 Transportation Department study concluded that the nationwide use of fully automated semis was years away, giving drivers time to transition to other transportation and logistics jobs that will be created.

Aurora’s Urmson said he thinks driverless semis will complement the work already done by human drivers, because many more goods will have to be moved for a growing population.

“If you’re driving a truck today,” he said, “my expectation is you’re going to be able to retire driving a truck.”

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Tractor-trailers with no one aboard? The future is near for self-driving trucks on US roads

In less than nine months, Aurora Innovation Inc., an autonomous transportation company, will launch up to 20 driverless trucks carrying loads on Texas highways for partners such as FedEx, Uber Freight and Werner. (AP Video: Jessie Wardarski)

A self-driving tractor trailer maneuvers around a test track in Pittsburgh, Thursday, March 14, 2024. The truck is owned by Pittsburgh-based Aurora Innovation Inc. Late this year, Aurora plans to start hauling freight on Interstate 45 between the Dallas and Houston areas with 20 driverless trucks. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

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The interior of the cab of a self driving truck is shown as the truck maneuvers around a test track in Pittsburgh, Thursday, March 14, 2024. The truck is owned by Pittsburgh-based Aurora Innovation Inc. Late this year, Aurora plans to start hauling freight on Interstate 45 between the Dallas and Houston areas with 20 driverless trucks. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

A self-driving tractor trailer is displayed at a test track in Pittsburgh, Thursday, March 14, 2024. The truck, outfitted with 25 laser, radar and camera sensors, is owned by Pittsburgh-based Aurora Innovation Inc. Late this year, Aurora plans to start hauling freight on Interstate 45 between the Dallas and Houston areas with 20 driverless trucks. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

A self-driving tractor trailer maneuvers around a test track in Pittsburgh, Thursday, March 14, 2024. The truck, outfitted with 25 laser, radar and camera sensors, is owned by Pittsburgh-based Aurora Innovation Inc. Late this year, Aurora plans to start hauling freight on Interstate 45 between the Dallas and Houston areas with 20 driverless trucks. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

PITTSBURGH (AP) — On a three-lane test track along the Monongahela River, an 18-wheel tractor-trailer rounded a curve. No one was on board.

A quarter-mile ahead, the truck’s sensors spotted a trash can blocking one lane and a tire in another. In less than a second, it signaled, moved into the unobstructed lane and rumbled past the obstacles.

The self-driving semi, outfitted with 25 laser, radar and camera sensors, is owned by Pittsburgh-based Aurora Innovation. Late this year, Aurora plans to start hauling freight on Interstate 45 between the Dallas and Houston areas with 20 driverless trucks.

Within three or four years, Aurora and its competitors expect to put thousands such self-driving trucks on America’s public freeways. The goal is for the trucks, which can run nearly around the clock without any breaks, to speed the flow of goods, accelerating delivery times and perhaps lowering costs. They’ll travel short distances on secondary roads, too.

AP AUDIO: Tractor-trailers with no one aboard? The future is near for self-driving trucks on US roads.

AP correspondent Jennifer King reports.

The companies say the autonomous trucks will save on fuel, too, because they don’t have to stop and will drive at more consistent speeds. Also, Aurora says its testing has shown that if a maintenance issue arises while one of its trucks is traveling on a freeway, the vehicle will automatically pull to the side of the road and remotely call for assistance.

The image of a fully loaded, 80,000-pound driverless truck weaving around cars on a super-highway at 65 mph or more may strike a note of terror. A poll conducted in January by AAA found that a decisive majority of American drivers — 66% — said they would fear riding in an autonomous vehicle.

But in less than nine months, a seven-year science experiment by Aurora will end, and driverless trucks will start carrying loads between terminals for FedEx, Uber Freight, Werner and other partners. Aurora and most of its rivals plan to start running freight routes in Texas, where snow and ice are generally rare.

For years, it seemed as though the initial venture for autonomous vehicles would be ride hailing in large cities. But General Motors’ Cruise robotaxi unit is struggling in the aftermath of a serious crash. And Alphabet’s Waymo faces opposition to expanding its autonomous ride service in California. The result is that self-driving trucks are poised to become the first computer-controlled vehicles deployed in widespread numbers on public roads.

The vehicles have drawn skepticism from safety advocates, who warn that with almost no federal regulation, it will be mainly up to the companies themselves to determine when the semis are safe enough to operate without humans on board. The critics complain that federal agencies, including the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, take a generally passive approach to safety, typically acting only after crashes occur. And most states provide scant regulation.

But Aurora and other companies that are developing the systems argue that years of testing show that their trucks will actually be safer than human-driven ones. They note that the vehicles’ laser and radar sensors can “see” farther than human eyes can. The trucks never tire, as human drivers do. They never become distracted or impaired by alcohol or drugs.

“We want to be out there with thousands or tens of thousands of trucks on the road,” said Chris Urmson, Aurora’s CEO and formerly head of Google’s autonomous vehicle operations. “And to do that, we have to be safe. It’s the only way that the public will accept it. Frankly, it’s the only way our customers will accept it.”

Phil Koopman, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who studies vehicle automation safety, said he agreed that self-driving trucks can theoretically be safer than human-driven ones — for the very reason that they lack drivers who might become distracted or impaired. But he cautioned that the vehicles’ computers inevitably will make errors. And just how the trucks will fare in real-world situations, he said, will depend on the quality of their safety engineering.

With billions of dollars in investments at stake, Koopman said, he wonders how the companies will balance safety decisions against cost concerns.

“Everything I see indicates they’re trying to do the right thing,” he said. “But the devil is in the details.”

On the test track, reporters saw Aurora’s semis avoid simulations of road obstacles, including pedestrians, a blown tire, even a horse. But the trucks were running at only 35 mph (56 kilometers per hour) in a controlled environment with nothing unexpected happening. (The trucks are being tested with human safety drivers on Texas freeways at speeds of 65 mph (105 kph) or higher.)

On the track, the trucks spotted obstacles more than a quarter-mile away and acted immediately to avoid them. Urmson said the trucks’ laser sensors can detect people walking on a highway at night, far beyond the distance of headlights.

Since 2021, Aurora trucks have autonomously hauled freight over 1 million miles on public highways — but with human safety drivers in the cabs. There have been only three crashes, Urmson said, all of them caused by mistakes by human drivers in other vehicles.

The crashes turned out to be minor, with no injuries. And in each case, the company said, the Aurora truck was able to safely pull to the side of the road.

A federal database that started in June 2021 shows at least 13 crashes with other vehicles involving autonomous semis, including three involving Aurora. In all the cases, the crashes were caused by other vehicles changing lanes or rear-ending the trucks. Sometimes, human safety drivers took over just before the crash.

Aurora won’t compromise safety, Urmson said, even if ensuring it might delay the timetable for achieving a profit.

“If we put a vehicle on the road that isn’t sufficiently safe — that we aren’t confident in the safety of — then it kills everything else,” he said.

Last month, when Urmson displayed the trucks to Wall Street analysts in Pittsburgh, he said the publicly held company expects to turn a profit by late 2027 or early 2028. To meet that goal, Aurora must succeed in putting thousands of the trucks on the roads, hauling freight from terminal to terminal and collecting a per-mile charge from customers.

The company’s competitors — Plus.ai, Gatik, Kodiak Robotics and others — also plan soon to put driverless trucks on the roads hauling freight for customers. Gatik expects it to happen this year or next; the others haven’t set timetables.

Don Burnette, CEO of Kodiak, said freeways are a better environment for autonomous vehicles than congested cities where ride-hailing robotaxis have been running. There are fewer pedestrians, and fewer unexpected things happen. Still, there are higher speeds and longer braking distances.

In testing on highways with human backup drivers, Burnette said, Kodiak has never experienced a crash in which its trucks were at fault.

“At the end of the day,” Burnette said, “these trucks should be much safer than human drivers.”

Almost every year in the United States, a tractor-trailer plows into traffic that is stopped because of road construction, often causing deaths and injuries. By contrast, Burnette said, autonomous trucks pay attention all the time and are always watching 360 degrees.

Perhaps so. But at a Buc-ee’s mega convenience store and gas station along Interstate 45 about 35 miles south of Dallas, the prospect of driverless semis struck a note of fear.

“It sounds like a disaster waiting to happen,” said Kent Franz, a high school basketball coach in Chandler, Oklahoma, who was traveling to Houston for a wedding. “I’ve heard of the driverless cars — Tesla, what have you — and the accidents they’ve been having. Eighteen-wheelers? Something that heavy, relying on technology that has proven it can be faulty? Doesn’t sound very comfortable to me.”

Patti Pierce, a retired accountant from Plano, Texas, said she would be OK with the technology — in about a decade.

“I don’t want to be on the road with them right now,” she said. “I like the gadgets in my car, but I’m not sure the technology is good enough right now to have a truck that drives itself.”

No federal regulations specifically cover autonomous vehicles, Koopman of Carnegie Mellon noted. Most states have no such regulations, either. Koopman said the automated-vehicle industry has persuaded many states to bar local governments from enacting such regulations. The result, he said, is that the public must trust the companies that are deploying autonomous semis.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, both part of the federal Department of Transportation, lack authority to stop autonomous vehicles from going on the roads. If something goes wrong, though, they can require recalls or order trucks out of service.

“You can’t expect the government to protect you here,” Koopman said. “The company’s going to decide when they think they’re safe, and the only thing the regulator is going to do is judge them after the fact.”

For the past five years, the motor carrier administration has been preparing safety standards for trucks with automated driving systems. The standards will govern inspections, maintenance and the remote monitoring of the trucks. But it’s unclear when the rules will emerge from the regulatory process.

In the meantime, the autonomous semi companies say they can help address a truck driver shortage, estimated by the industry to amount to 64,000 drivers. Yet there also are worries that autonomous trucks eventually will supplant human drivers and cost them their livelihoods.

The Teamsters union, which represents about 600,000 drivers, most of them truckers, is pushing state legislatures to require human drivers to monitor the self-driving systems, contending that they are unsafe. A 2021 Transportation Department study concluded that the nationwide use of fully automated semis was years away, giving drivers time to transition to other transportation and logistics jobs that will be created.

Aurora’s Urmson said he thinks driverless semis will complement the work already done by human drivers, because many more goods will have to be moved for a growing population.

“If you’re driving a truck today,” he said, “my expectation is you’re going to be able to retire driving a truck.”

AP Business Writer David Koenig contributed to this report from Dallas and AP Data Journalist Aaron Kessler from Washington.