Aurora recently released its Q3 business review, which included the addition of a new freight lane and updates on its driverless validation, hardware upgrades and production status among its OEM partners.

The company reported it had achieved over 100,000 driverless miles on public roads. The trucks ran between Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston, with the company announcing the addition of a westward route to El Paso. The approximately 600-mile run from Fort Worth to El Paso was announced in a press release on Tuesday.

“Six months out from launch, we’re achieving more industry-firsts, expanding quickly and paving the way to deploy hundreds of trucks next year,” said Chris Urmson, co-founder and CEO at Aurora, in the release. “Expanding to El Paso, notching over 100,000 driverless miles and integrating our new hardware with multiple truck platforms extends our strong lead.”

While Texas remains king in the autonomous space, there are plans for an expansion to Phoenix slated for January 2026. The recent addition of the El Paso lane also brought two more carriers on board to test the driverless vehicles.

When Aurora trucks hit the road, the trucks can also be seen on the internet and social media via live streaming. The company has logged over 6,000 hours of watch time for its live streaming of the Aurora Driver in action. The live streams showcase the trucks navigating Texas traffic while running routes.

Rain and difficult weather conditions were also mentioned. “We continue to make progress validating driverless operations in challenging weather, including rain and heavy wind conditions, which we expect to complete with our January 2026 software release,” according to the review.

Ambitious roadmap, more partners and hardware upgrades

Aurora plans to launch its second-generation commercial hardware kit in Q2 2026. This hardware will enable a new fleet of trucks that can do driverless operations without a partner-requested observer.

Notably, the Q3 business review hinted at more driverless runs without an observer through a new near-term capacity plan with a third truck fleet, which will allow driverless operations without a partner-requested observer.

The partner fleet’s OEM is International Motors, part of the larger global OEM Traton Group. Aurora notes, “This fleet, which will be based on the International LT Series vehicle while Aurora will perform all necessary upfit for driverless operations, supports our target to exit 2026 with hundreds of driverless trucks.”

Regarding the other OEMs Aurora has partnerships with, the company noted Volvo began lineside integration of the second-generation Aurora Driver kit into the Volvo VNL autonomous. Lineside integration involves direct integration of the assembly lines with the right automation technologies to produce the new vehicle. These VNL Autonomous Class 8 trucks are being produced at Volvo’s pilot line at their New River Valley, Virginia, manufacturing facility.

For PACCAR, another OEM partner for the Aurora virtual driver, the company continues to advance prototype testing of their own scalable autonomy-enabled truck platform at PACCAR’s facilities.

While the second-generation hardware hints at fully driverless operations, it will be Aurora’s planned third-generation hardware that will unlock the ability to scale into the tens of thousands of virtual driver-powered autonomous trucks. Aurora noted, “As we work toward [the] start of production in 2027, we have now received computer samples from AUMOVIO with NVIDIA’s DRIVE Thor system-on-a-chip, which we are now testing. Complete prototypes of this hardware kit are on track for delivery by the end of the year to begin engineering validation testing.”

Aurora also added a case study showcasing earning potential for its virtual driver.

Included in the Q3 business review was a case study showing the possible revenue growth from Aurora’s virtual driver. During a one-week comparison, the company examined the Fort Worth to Phoenix lane, which ran across Texas along Interstate 10 for approximately 1,000 miles. For a human driver during that week period, it was estimated they could complete three trips with a single solo driver. The Aurora driver logged an estimated eight trips.

Each trip was priced at $2.05 per mile based on data from loadboard provider DAT, which looked at a contract bidirectional lane price, plus a processed fuel surcharge of 42 cents per mile. The solo human driver tallied an estimated revenue of $6,150 for those three trips. The Aurora driver logged $16,400.

Calculating profit can be trickier as trucking is a notoriously low-margin business. According to Aurora’s estimates, which included cost data from the American Transportation Research Institute and based on 2023 operating margin of the truckload sector of 3%. Using this data, the estimated cost per mile for our human-driven truck was $1.99 while the autonomous truck equipped with the Aurora driver was at $1.84.

The net margin based on these assumptions went from 3% $185 profit per week with a human driver to $1,695 or 10% with the virtual driver.

The recent moves and announcements by Aurora come as the company recently settled one potential major regulatory hurdle, the ability to use roadside safety beacons instead of human-placed triangle reflective cones.

The limited three-month renewable waiver granted by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration allows the autonomous truck developer to use a cab-mounted flashing warning beacon instead of reflective triangles.

For Aurora and other autonomous trucking companies, this also applies to other motor carriers so long as the carrier first notifies the FMCSA in writing. Furthermore, the carrier must comply with all the terms and conditions of the waiver.