Industry partnerships are fueling the advent of autonomous trucking at scale.
Dawn, Europeanand NVIDIA today announced a long-term strategic partnership to develop driverless trucks at scale, powered by the next-generation NVIDIA DRIVE Thor system-on-a-chip (SoC). DRIVE Thor and NVIDIA’s DriveOS will be integrated into the Aurora Driver, an SAE Level 4 autonomous driving system that Continental plans to mass-produce in 2027.
Scaling of driverless trucks
Aurora aims to deliver the benefits of self-driving technology safely, quickly and widely to make transportation safer, increasingly affordable, and more reliable and efficient than ever before. Aurora Driver is an autonomous driving system designed to operate many types of vehicles, from freight trucks to passenger vehicles, and supports Aurora’s driver-as-a-service products for trucking and driving.
“The delivery of a driverless truck will be monumental. The deployment of thousands will change the way we live,” said Chris Urmson, CEO and co-founder of Aurora. “NVIDIA is the market leader in computing acceleration and will strengthen our ecosystem of partners and our ability to deliver safe and reliable driverless trucks to our customers at scale.”
“Developing, industrializing and manufacturing powerful self-driving equipment at commercial scale requires unique and unmatched expertise,” said Aruna Anand, President & CEO, Automotive, Continental North America. “Our first partnership with Aurora and NVIDIA to deliver driverless trucks places Continental at the forefront of this cutting-edge technology and will add value to our business.”
“The combination of NVIDIA’s automotive-class DRIVE Thor platform with Aurora’s advanced truck self-driving technology and Continental’s manufacturing and integration expertise is set to help drive the future of autonomous trucking, contributing to road safety while increasing operational performance,” said Rishi Dhall. , vice president of automotive at NVIDIA.
Final validation is underway for a planned release in April
Aurora is in the final stages of validating the Aurora Driver for driverless operations on public roads. The Aurora driver is equipped with a powerful computer and sensors, including lidar, radar and cameras, that allow it to operate safely at highway speeds. Verifiable AI allows the Aurora driver to quickly adapt to new areas of operation, while being validated through Aurora’s security case, an essential tool for regulatory trust and public acceptance. Aurora plans to launch its driverless trucking service in Texas in April 2025.
NVIDIA will power the main Aurora driver computer with a dual NVIDIA DRIVE Thor SoC configuration running DriveOS. DRIVE Thor, built on NVIDIA The Blackwell architecture is designed to accelerate the inference tasks that are critical for autonomous vehicles to understand and navigate the world around them. As Continental and Aurora prepare to build self-driving equipment at scale in 2027, there’s a lot of action now: production samples of the DRIVE Thor are coming in the first half of 2025.
Continental is one of the most important automotive suppliers worldwide. The company employs approximately 200,000 people in 56 countries and markets, generating sales of €41.4 billion in 2023. Continental is developing a reliable, easy-to-use, cost-effective generation of Aurora Driver hardware, especially for high-volume production. The company is also developing a specialized independent secondary system that can take over if the main Aurora Driver computer fails. With start of production scheduled for 2027, Continental will test prototypes of the future hardware kit in the coming months. Continental will then integrate DRIVE Thor with DriveOS into the main Aurora Driver computer at its manufacturing facilities and ship the complete hardware kit to Aurora’s truck OEM partners for integration into customers’ trucks.
At the Consumer Electronics Show 2025 this week in Las Vegas, Continental is showcasing an early prototype of Continental’s Aurora Driver hardware and the Volvo VNL Autonomous: the flagship model of Volvo’s autonomous technology platform designed to integrate seamlessly with the Aurora Guide.
What’s Coming In 2025?
Based on CES schedule information, other Automated Driving System developers exhibiting at CES 2025 are Plus, Volvo Group, Waymo, WeRide and Zoox. These companies are beyond the heady days of yesteryear, when the question was “is it possible to deploy autonomous driving safely on public roads?” While many companies fell by the wayside in the following years, those that remain are generally transitioning to scalable products.
In fact, 2025 looks set to be the launch year for autonomous driving, tantalizingly moving towards full commercial development of autonomous trucking. Not just Aurora: Gatik has signaled similar “commodity-only” deployments with the potential to scale in early 2025.
Meanwhile, driving with driverless vehicles continues to gain momentum. Importantly, Aurora signals a future that includes rail as well as trucks. If so, they will be unique in the US covering both use cases.
Disclosure: Richard Bishop advises and/or owns stock in the following companies mentioned in this article: Alphabet, Aurora, Gatik, Plus, WeRide.
