Continental and Aurora have finalised the design for the world’s first scalable autonomous trucking system.
Through their partnership, the two companies have produced the final design and architecture of the future SAE Level 4 Aurora Driver.
This paves the way for Aurora to deploy autonomous trucks at scale after its initial driverless launch, planned for the end of 2024.
Philipp von Hirschheydt, Executive Board member for the Automotive Group sector at Continental said:Technologies for autonomous mobility present the biggest opportunity to transform driving behaviour since the creation of the automobile. Achieving this milestone puts us on a credible path to deploy easy-to-service autonomous trucking systems that customers demand.
With this announcement, Continental and Aurora have shared their four-year partnership roadmap to commercialise thousands of autonomous trucks.
Now that the system architecture has been finalised, Continental will build initial versions of the hardware for testing at its facility in New Braunfels, Texas. This will take place between 2024-2025.
From 2026-2027, production will commence at Continental’s facilities and will be shipped to Aurora’s trucking manufacturing partners for integration into autonomous-ready vehicles.
In 2027 and beyond, deployment is expected to start at scale, allowing thousands of trucks integrated with the Aurora Driver to autonomously haul freight across the US.
Chris Urmson, Co-Founder and CEO at Aurora said:From day one, we knew we’d need to build a strong ecosystem of partners to bring this technology to market safely and at a commercial scale. Finalising the design of our future hardware is a meaningful step toward making the unit economics of the Aurora Driver compelling and building a business for the long-term.
Continental’s work with Aurora will be showcased at CES 2024 in Las Vegas from 9-12 January.
