Aurora Begins Driverless Operations at Night and Opens Phoenix Terminal

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07/30/2025 - 04:15 PM

Driverless nighttime capabilities double potential truck utilization
Phoenix terminal now supporting autonomous trips along Aurora’s Fort Worth, El Paso, Phoenix lane
Company announces second quarter 2025 financial results

PITTSBURGH--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Aurora Innovation, Inc. (NASDAQ: AUR), the leader in self-driving trucks, today announced a significant expansion of its commercial operations, including surpassing 20,000 driverless miles at the end of June, recently growing its driverless fleet to three trucks, beginning driverless commercial operations at night, and opening its Phoenix terminal.

(Credit: Aurora) Aurora, the leader in self-driving trucks, begins nighttime driverless operations.

“Efficiency, uptime, and reliability are important for our customers, and Aurora is showing we can deliver,” said Chris Urmson, co-founder and CEO of Aurora. “Just three months after launch, we’re running driverless operations day and night and we’ve expanded our terminal network to Phoenix. Our rapid progress is beginning to unlock the full value of self-driving trucks for our customers, which has the potential to transform the trillion-dollar trucking industry.”

Delivering Increased Value with Day and Night Commercial Operations

Aurora has expanded driverless operations on the Dallas-to-Houston lane to now include nighttime driving. This capability more than doubles truck utilization potential, significantly shortening delivery times on long-haul routes and creating a path to profitability for autonomous trucking.

Autonomous trucks can also make roads safer. Due to low visibility and driver fatigue, a disproportionate 37% of fatal crashes involving large trucks occur at night. The Aurora Driver reliably sees and understands the world around it day and night without ever getting tired. Powered by Aurora’s proprietary, long-range FirstLight Lidar, the Aurora Driver can detect objects in the dark more than 450 meters away, identifying pedestrians, vehicles, and debris up to 11-seconds sooner than a traditional driver.

Aurora Opens Phoenix Terminal

Aurora’s new terminal in Phoenix opened in June and exemplifies an infrastructure-light approach that resembles how Aurora plans to integrate with future customer endpoints. This evolution optimizes for speed to market and enables Aurora’s plan to deliver freight directly to customer endpoints.

Fort Worth to Phoenix is nearly half the distance of the busy Atlanta to Los Angeles freight corridor, taking more than 15 hours to complete. Self-driving trucks can halve transit times, especially on long routes that exceed the 11-hour driving limit for human drivers. Aurora is currently making autonomous hauls on this lane for Hirschbach and Werner.

To further build on its commitment to industry-leading transparency, Aurora launched Aurora Driver Live, a publicly available livestream of its self-driving truck operations. The livestream demonstrates the safety, reliability, and growing maturity of the Aurora Driver, offering a first-of-its-kind glimpse into the future of freight transportation.

Aurora Announces Second Quarter 2025 Results

Today the company also announced its second quarter 2025 results, including additional liquidity which the company expects to fund operations into Q2 2027. Aurora’s shareholder letter and financial results are available on its investor relations website at ir.aurora.tech. The company will host a business review conference call today, July 30, at 5:00 p.m. ET. The conference call will be webcast on Aurora’s investor relations website and an accompanying presentation has also been posted to the website. A replay will be accessible for 30 days following the call.

About Aurora

Aurora (Nasdaq: AUR) is delivering the benefits of self-driving technology safely, quickly, and broadly to make transportation safer, increasingly accessible, and more reliable and efficient than ever before. The Aurora Driver is a self-driving system designed to operate multiple vehicle types, from freight-hauling trucks to ride-hailing passenger vehicles, and underpins Aurora’s driver as a service products for trucking and ride-hailing. Aurora is working with industry leaders across the transportation ecosystem, including Continental, FedEx, Hirschbach, NVIDIA, PACCAR, Ryder, Schneider, Toyota, Uber, Uber Freight, Volvo Trucks, Volvo Autonomous Solutions, and Werner. To learn more, visit aurora.tech.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. All statements contained in this press release that do not relate to matters of historical fact should be considered forward-looking statements, including but not limited to, the prospects of the development, manufacturing, scaling and commercialization, and realization of the potential benefits, of the Aurora Driver and FirstLight Lidar, and related services and technology, the relationships and anticipated benefits with customers and partners, and the anticipated impact of our product on the freight industry and economy. These statements are based on management’s current assumptions and are neither promises nor guarantees, but involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors that may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. For factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements in this press release, please see the risks and uncertainties identified under the heading “Risk Factors” section of Aurora Innovation, Inc.’s (“Aurora”) Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2024, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) on February 14, 2025, and other documents filed by Aurora from time to time with the SEC, which are accessible on the SEC website at www.sec.gov. Additional information will also be set forth in Aurora’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2025. All forward-looking statements reflect our beliefs and assumptions only as of the date of this press release. Aurora undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances.