Autonomous trucking company Aurora (AUR) CEO Chris Urmson joins Asking for a Trend with Josh Lipton and Julie Hyman to discuss autonomous driving safety, competition in the space, the impact on the freight industry, and more.

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Video Transcript

00:00 Dave Briggs

Well, driverless trucks are officially on the road. Aurora Innovation making autonomous freight a reality as it operates a commercial self-driving service with heavy-duty trucks on public roads. Company recently reporting first quarter results highlighting the available liquidity to fund operations into the fourth quarter of 26. Here with more is Aurora CEO Chris Urmson, and Yahoo Finance's Julie Hyman. Chris, it is good to see you. So let's start there with those those results you just reported, Chris. Walk us through the report. What are you seeing in the business?

00:36 Chris Urmson

Yeah, well, the big news for us is that we've been talking for years about getting self-driving trucks on the road, actually doing that for real. And that we've accomplished that. A couple of weeks ago, we started operating, and now every day, we have trucks on the road, pulling goods for customers with nobody sat behind the steering wheel. Over the rest of the year, we're really going to be focused on how do we take this from an initial launch lane here between Dallas and Houston, and on the road from Fort Worth to Phoenix, moving it so that it operates day and night and in weather. So really exciting times for us.

01:22 Julie Hyman

Well, and talk to us about how it's going. And something else I'm curious about, Chris, when we talk about self-driving vehicles that are cars, right? But they're supposed to be passenger or sort of taxi-like vehicles. There has been a discussion going on about how many humans are sort of involved in their operation, right? Do you have remote control of the vehicles in some cases. Talk me through, does that happen with the trucks as well?

02:03 Chris Urmson

Well, it's going about as well as we could hope at this point. So I took a ride the first day. We went from Dallas to Houston. I sat in the back as luggage. There was no joystick or control. I was really just along for the ride. And along the way, we encountered a Mazda that was weaving around in front of us. We got to Houston and the traffic was as dense as it always is in Houston. And it just worked. So the point that, you know, by the time we're taking the trip back, despite this being a first of its kind adventure, I was watching YouTube in the back seat. So really exciting to see the progress. I'm really excited to see this on the road. No, our trucks are really reliant on their own ability to drive safely. We talk about the fact that there's nearly ubiquitous cell phone coverage in the US. But when you're talking about a truck safely driving down the road, you don't want to count on the nearly. You really need to have the thing be able to drive safely by itself.

03:37 Dave Briggs

In terms, Chris, of sort of, you know, your tech's impact on jobs, I would assume, Chris, if you're driving a truck now, you're fine. But I'm just curious, I mean, if you were talking to a young American right now and giving them advice, would you still encourage them to pursue a career as a truck driver?

04:02 Chris Urmson

I'd certainly encourage them to pursue a career in logistics, and I think that's going to be a continuing growing space for us. My expectation is, and the industry expects, that over the next decade, we need a million new people to be willing to drive trucks. And it's an incredibly important job, and I am thankful for everyone who's willing to do it. But there aren't enough Americans who want to do it. And with the country's current trend in immigration policy, we don't expect there's going to be enough people that are willing to get behind the wheel, spend time away from family, deal with the fact that they're 10 times as likely to die on the job as the average American. And so we see what we're building at Aurora, really to complement the men and women who serve this country by driving freight.

05:09 Dave Briggs

Chris, you do have competitors, by Bloomberg's math, at least five. What makes Aurora different?

05:19 Chris Urmson

Well, I think the biggest thing that makes us different is we actually have a product on the road, right? And that's the culmination of the work of an incredible team that we have here. We have some really interesting proprietary technology in both our verifiable AI, which is a way of using some of the most modern machine learning and AI techniques you've talked about around ChatGPT and Google and whatnot, but doing that in a way that you can actually trust it to drive safely on the road. We have special technology in the lidar, which is a sensor we use to look ahead down the road. We can see five football fields down the road. That's something no one else is able to do. And when you're driving a big truck, it's important to see that far out. And then we have incredible partnerships. So today, we work with Volvo and Peterbilt trucks. Volvo and Paccar are the parent company that makes Peterbilt, make half the trucks sold in the US market. So that's a really great set of partnerships. We work with Continental, who's one of the world's leading tier one manufacturers. They can help us produce the hardware at scale, so we can really have a huge impact in the market. And then finally, incredible set of customers, with folks like Werner, Schneider, Hirschbach, Uber Freight. These are all folks who are kind of the pinnacle in the freight industry, and we have the privilege of working with them today.

07:10 Julie Hyman

So Chris, the thing you said at the beginning of all of that, that you guys are the first ones out the door, how important do you think that will be down the line when there are a lot of other autonomous trucks on the road? Do you think that, in other words, how big of a head start does that give you, that first mover advantage?

07:37 Chris Urmson

Yeah, we, so we're talking about freight in the US as a trillion dollar market, so it's a gigantic space. So today, we really see it as a green field, and we want to get out there and start serving customers and creating value. But we think it's a big deal. We think we have a multi-year lead on this gigantic market compared to anyone. And with the tools, processes, and technology we've built in house, we think we're only going to accelerate and further build that lead. So I'm incredibly bullish about where we are. It's an incredibly exciting time with the company.

08:24 Dave Briggs

Chris, always great to see you. Thank you so much for your time. Appreciate it.

08:31 Chris Urmson

Thanks very much.  Related Videos

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