this post was submitted on 02 May 2025
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That's not an impressive number. That's like 2 days' worth of driving.
Yeah that's about 2 and a half round-trips between Dallas and Houston, that's...not a lot to be calling this thing ready to go and pulling out the safety drivers.
I wonder how these handle accidents, traffic stops, bad lane markings from road construction, mechanical failure, bad weather (heavy rain making it difficult/impossible to see lane markings), etc.
You'd think they would be keeping the safety drivers in place for at least 6+ months of regular long-haul drives and upwards of 100k miles to cover all bases.
You'd think that, but you're talking about Texas, where corporate profit always wins over people's safety and well-being.
The one article I heard on TechLinked talked about them using lidarr.
So better in every way than a tesla.
Assuming they are top mounted, they have a better scanning coverage than a regular car.
Hmm, I thought they were using ligers. I'll have to go back and read that again.
Take this source as you want. Couldnt find much about it.
https://electrek.co/2025/05/01/aurora-first-company-deploy-class-8-self-driving-trucks-us-public-roads-video/
and
https://aurora.tech/
It would be more interesting to know how many miles they completed with the safety driver in the vehicle.
That figure is without a human in the truck, not with a safety driver. I.E, they've done a bunch of testing beforehand.
Most rigs go at least 1,000,000 miles and that isn't isn't even end off life. You'll be paying not much less than new for a rig that only has 100k, that's practically brand new. These systems should have 100 million proven miles. These things weight 80,000lbs which can be very hazardous materials.
You should see the pile ups semis cause in low visibility. Even with really good lidar, I hesitant to say autonomous trucks can be safe running off independent systems on full mixed use roads.
We could add those systems to all roads to feed back to semis to know conditions and hazards miles before they reach them. We could build new smart roads for all autonomous vechilce to travel on separately.
Or we could just end the 100+ year old railroad cartel. Could move people and cargo with ease. But that isn't profitable.
Its enough to prove the concept.
If it saves 1% of operating costs trucking businesses will be falling over themselves to implement it.
Nah no one's going to bother with new tech for 1% - that's crazy.