Overview
- Aurora opened a 600-mile Fort Worth–El Paso driverless lane, its second Texas route after Dallas–Houston, with freight from Hirschbach Motor Lines and Russell Transport.
- Since its May launch, the company says five trucks have driven more than 100,000 driverless miles with a perfect on-time and safety record.
- New hardware featuring FirstLight lidar with 1,000-meter detection, tougher components and improved sensor cleaning is built by Fabrinet and aimed to cut system cost roughly in half.
- Pilot integration is underway on Volvo’s VNL Autonomous at the New River Valley facility and on International LT Series trucks, supporting plans to scale to hundreds of vehicles in 2026 and to remove partner-requested observers in Q2 2026 pending safety validation.
- A USDOT waiver on a roadside warning-beacon rule eases an operational barrier, and Aurora still targets a Phoenix lane by year-end ahead of higher-volume hardware co-developed with AUMOVIO slated for 2027.