A new self-driving truck — built by Volvo and loaded with autonomous vehicle technology developed by Aurora Innovation — could hit public highways as early as this summer.
The Volvo VNL autonomous truck, which was showcased at the ACT Expo in Las Vegas on Monday evening, is the product of a partnership between Aurora and Volvo Autonomous Solutions. Aurora plans to begin moving freight using these Volvo self-driving trucks in the next several months. The trucks will be in autonomous mode and will also have a human safety operator behind the wheel to take control if necessary.
According to an Aurora spokesperson, later this year, the company plans to announce pilot programs with customers who will use Volvo VNL autonomous trucks. Volvo has already begun building an initial test fleet of these self-driving trucks at its New River Valley Assembly facility in Virginia.
The reveal of the Volvo VNL autonomous truck comes as Aurora moves toward its stated goal of commercializing self-driving trucks by the end of 2024. The company initially plans to move freight between Dallas and Houston using 20 driverless Class 8 trucks — this time with no humans behind the wheel. Aurora declined to share whether trucks made by Volvo or its other partner Packer will be in that inaugural driverless fleet.
Achieving commercialization is existential for Aurora—one of the last autonomous trucking companies to take off. Last year, waymo via brakes on its self-driving trucking program, and TuSimple has recently left the US market In favor of expansion in Asia. Aurora has also not been immune to the high-capital costs of developing and then launching commercial autonomous trucks. In January, the company laid off 3% of its workforce So that costs can be cut before its commercial launch.
Consolidation in the AV industry means fewer rivals for Aurora. Einride, Torc and Kodiak Robotics, which revealed its own Purpose-built self-driving big rigAre among the few left.
The Volvo partnership, which the companies first signed in March 2021, is a part of Aurora’s commercialization strategy. Aurora has launched pilot programs with logistics companies FedEx, Ryder, Schneider and Uber Freight. In January, Aurora and automotive supplier Continental closed the first phase of a more $300 million project Mass producing autonomous vehicle hardware for commercial self-driving trucks. The two companies finalized the design and system architecture for the AV hardware kit, as well as drew up blueprints for a secondary computer that could take over operations if a failure occurred. The company says the Continental hardware kit won’t be on Aurora trucks until 2027, but the Volvo VNL will still be packed with safety features.
The Volvo truck includes additional steering, braking, communications, computation, power management, energy storage and vehicle speed management systems, according to Aurora. The truck is also integrated with the so-called Aurora Driver, a self-driving system that includes dual computers, self-driving software, in-house lidar that can detect objects more than 1,300 feet away, high-resolution cameras and imaging radar.
“Our platform engineering approach prioritizes safety by incorporating high-assurance redundancy systems designed to mitigate potential emergency situations,” Shahrukh Kazmi, chief product officer of Volvo Autonomous Solutions, said in a statement. “We built Volvo VNL Autonomous from the ground up, integrating these redundant systems to ensure that every safety-critical component was intentionally replicated, significantly increasing both safety and reliability.”
Once Aurora and Volvo have validated the platform, the plan is to launch fully driverless operations with a “modestly sized fleet of trucks,” according to an Aurora spokesperson, who declined to provide a specific timeline. Refused. Over the next few years, Aurora and Volvo expect to begin high-volume production of Volvo VNLs integrated with Aurora Driver, the spokesperson said.
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