• Aurora Innovation, an autonomous vehicle technology startup, has partnered with transportation and logistics company Werner Enterprises for a commercial pilot to deploy autonomous trucks to haul goods in a 600+ mile route between Fort Worth and El Paso, Texas. With this, Weber becomes Aurora’s first full-truckload carrier customer.

• Initially, trucks will be deployed with a safety driver on weekly hauls, with plans to increase the level of autonomy and frequency in the future.

• The company has also bought two new terminal sites to service this route and to build the required infrastructure in order to facilitate the pilot.

<ul><li> Analyst QuickTake: This marks Aurora Innovation’s third autonomous truck pilot in Texas, following partnerships with FedEx (September 2021) and Uber Freight (December 2021). Texas has always been a popular destination for autonomous trucking companies given its geographical location, availability of academic and research institutions, and the Texan government’s encouragement. Other autonomous trucking companies with operations in Texas include Google Waymo, Daimler, Gatik, TuSimple, Embark Trucks, and Kodiak Robotics. </ul>