Aurora Innovation, Inc. (AUR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

September 23, 2026

NASDAQ US Information Technology Software investor_day 140 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Unknown Executive

executive
#1

[Audio Gap] Please refer to the risk factors and other disclosures in our most recent 10-K and our other filings with the SEC. And our discussion today may also include non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP measures should be considered in addition to and not substitute for or in isolation from our GAAP results. Now let's get into the fun stuff. Enjoy. [Presentation]

Christopher Urmson

executive
#2

Welcome, and thank you for joining us. No, it's a lot to ask you to come down here to Dallas and spend a whole day with us. So we really appreciate that. We hope this could be worth your time today. What I really wanted for you to spend -- to get out of today is to learn a little bit about what about Aurora, a little bit about where we're going and hopefully come away with the same level of excitement that I and we have for Aurora ahead. It's going to be a hell of a few years for us. Today, Aurora and the freight industry are at a point of inflection. We no longer need to talk about when autonomous trucking is going to happen. We talked about how it is happening on the road today. Euro Driver is here now, and we're ready to scale. I like spending time understanding how new technologies kind of came into existence as you look back over history. And in doing that, I've seen this common pattern, most of the world's most transformative products have something in common. They spend a couple of decades wandering through the wildness really kind of trying to figure out how to actually make it work. And then all of a sudden, they look inevitable. For decades, after Ben's invented the automobile, it really was this novelty for rich people that no one thought had a hope of replacing the [indiscernible] carriage. Right? It took 20 years of refinement. It took Henry forward kind of innovating the assembly line. And then we're able to get to the point where we can start to put a car in every driveway. And voided that change the world. It didn't just change how we moved, changed how we live. It changes the world, the shape of the world we live in. In the shipping industry, Malca McLean began experimenting with containerization and at first, it went nowhere, right? It was imposed. Freight had moved the same way on chips for literally centuries. But 20 years of refinement this kind of magic moment of product market fit in the Vietnam War, suddenly kind of open the world's eyes to this. And all of a sudden, it was inevitable. It opened the way for new economic hubs and have built the global supply chain that we all rely on today. And then finally, Vince Serve and his buddies, back in 1969, connecting a few nodes to create the ARPANET. Initially, it was very much a curiosity, right? It was for academics to talk to one another over a network. It took almost 30 years the revolution in the telecommunications to create a global telecommunication network and the web browser. But ultimately, they create a platform that fundamentally changed not just the way we communicate with the way we connect and how we do commerce. Cars, cargo, information, the same pattern, investment for a period of 20 years and then suddenly inevitable. And not coincidentally, these are all bits of technology that we need to enable what we're doing now. Each of them transformed our world and created immense value and our technology is on a similar shape of trajectory, 20 years ago, DARPA kick started automated vehicles with their grand challenges. These robot rates across the desert. I took part those early competitions, ultimately leading the team that won the 2007 DARPA Urban challenge. We looked at what we built at the time, and we had big dreams. This was going to be big. It's going to transform the world. We literally had no idea how hard it was going to be and I can tell you, if I probably did, I wouldn't be here talking to you about it today because I would have going to found basket weaving or something. I then spent 7.5 years leading what's now Waymo. And we made tremendous progress, real strides, but we still weren't ready. It's now been about 20 years since those challenges. And I can tell you, we are ready today. Our first product, as you all know, is [indiscernible] driver for freight. We chose trucking for a bunch of reasons. First and foremost, there's actually a huge need for this technology, the market, the addressable market that we can reach is gigantic, and we think there's an opportunity for incredible unit economics. The customer decision makers are dispassionate. If we are safe and we can help them bring value and grow their business, they're going to adopt this technology. That is clear. And finally, there's a tremendous amount of existing infrastructure that we can leverage. As someone who's excited about scaling this business and doing that in a capital-light way, that's cool. I imagine that's pretty cool for all you that we don't have to continue to invest heavily to actually scale and grow the business. To have the privilege of serving this market, we have invested heavily, right? We've been developing our software and AI systems, our Verifiable AI system that's on the road today. We've invested in our second and third generation hardware that meet our affordability targets to meet our robust and targets to meet our ability to scale. Our OEM strategy means that we can put the Aurora Driver on the platforms and vehicles that our customers demand. And our customers are excited for what we've built. And we're seeing that demand accelerating. Our philosophy from day 1 has been do what we do best in the world and then work with amazing great companies. I believe and we believe that we will scale faster and deliver more value if we can focus on what we do best and they can lean into their strengths. We are proud of the ecosystem we've built. It contains world-class OEMs, amazing logistics companies, hardware partners, it's awesome, right? And you'll hear from many of them today. Building a connected ecosystem like this is hard. It takes time to build the relationships and build trust. There's really no shortcut to that. But what we are seeing is that with each proof point, each example we put on the board, our ecosystem is accelerating, people look at what we are doing, we want to be part of this. They see the benefits to their businesses. This is why I believe we're at an inflection point. The tech, the partners and the customers are already. It has been a hard journey, but the Aurora Driver is now on the same rapid adoption curve as we've seen with these other technologies in the past. Today, we are the only company operating [indiscernible] trucks on the road and scaling. Not a pilot, not with a safety driver behind the wheel, but in actual day in, day out operation. And this is just the beginning. By the end of the year, we expect to have 200 trucks on the road. A road driver too was a huge step to work for us. It allowed us to get our verifiable AI systems out on hardware that was cutting edge that had both price, our cost and scalability and durability that we needed. And it allowed us to deploy the tools and services that will ultimately allow our customers to use this technology in our operations and allow us to scale with them to meet their demand. Now trucking is a tough business, and it's only getting tougher. Driving is difficult and demanding. And that means that there aren't enough people that want to do this important job. And our policy decisions are actually taking more supply out of the market. People need to rest. That means that these assets have to sit idle or companies have to do complicated logistical things with slip seat driving or team driving. And driving a truck is dangerous. As a truck driver, you are 10x is likely to die in job as the average American. 5,000 people are killed in collisions with heavy trucks every year. This is something we can do something about. Fuel, labor, insurance, these are all costs that are increasing. When a customer integrates the Aurora Driver into their fleet, we will be able to help them drive all of these down simultaneously. The Aurora Driver makes trucking safer, 360-degree perception, validated safety case, millions of tests, this gives us conviction when we put it on the road, it will be the safest, best driver out there. The Aurora Driver never needs to take a day off, and our customers can deploy it where they need it, when they need it, allowing them to meet their customers' demands. Of course, the Aurora Driver doesn't need to rest, allowing trucks to operate 24/7, really creating that opportunity to double utilization. And finally, all of this drives down the cost of labor, fuel and insurance, again, simultaneously. Taken together, the Aurora Driver is nothing short of transformational for these businesses. And these benefits are not hypothetical, we're delivering real-world value with customers today. When you look at the video here on the left, this is the Aurora Driver on I-20, [indiscernible] along at 70 miles an hour, I think. At this moment, as construction worker decides it's time to go have lunch in the outside of the road, they run across the road driver sees them, slows down, everybody goes home safe. In our long-haul applications with Werner McLean, we're seeing trucks running 225,000 miles on an annualized basis. Again, that is double the normal utilization for these assets. And then finally, in our short-haul application with Detmar, we're doubling the number of trips per day that they're able to operate. Safety is table stakes, doubling utilization is a change -- fundamental change in the value we can provide. Now as I mentioned before, we are fully allocated to exit 2026 with 200 driverless trucks on the road operating for customers on our existing routes. For customers to use the Aurora Driver, we need to meet them where they are. That means operating from and to their endpoints. Today, we're live offering driver sleep for Detmar between the capital sands mine and between their distribution point. In the coming weeks and months, you'll see us begin to operate drivelessly for more customers. Make no mistake, it is clear that the core value that we provide as part of the Aurora Driver is operating directly between customer end points and that is the product we're building and deploying. Having had the opportunity to work with customers at their endpoints, it's really given us the ability to improve and optimize through Aurora Driver and ensure that it will fit seamlessly into their businesses. And as we head into 2027, we're further expanding the network we plan to -- or we're going to be supporting and growing into. It took us 6 years to develop, validate and deploy for the first lien. It took us 6 months for the second lien. And earlier this year, we deployed a lien in 6 weeks. In the not distant future, it's going to take us days. That's because the Aurora Driver is now generalized. And every bit of further generalization we make eases the ability to open new lanes. In parallel, we're continuing to develop the tools that allow us to map, validate and verify the Aurora Driver, so we can have confidence that's safe on the road. The combination of these two is not just a linear improvement in how quickly you can open lanes, but an exponential one. Once again, we see this inflection point that means that we will be able to scale and build the business. Now before I hand over to Osa, I want to take a moment to zoom out. Over the long term, automating freight is going to bolster the U.S. economy. The Aurora Driver will make our logistics pipelines safer, more robust and lower cost. Lower cost logistics is great. It's going to both help the end consumer because goods will cost less. We will help fight inflation. But beyond that, through Jevons paradox, lower-cost freight will mean that there is more demand for freight, which will grow our customers' businesses. And in parallel with that, automating the middle mile long haul routes we're going to be focusing on will actually help our partners elevate the role of their logistics professionals, allowing them to focus on being the face of the company in short haul applications and importantly, allowing them to sleep in their own beds at night. We're going to help transform this industry. We're starting this flywheel motion today. Of course, it is not going to happen overnight, but the long-term impact of what we're building is profound. So thank you for being on the journey. Thank you again for taking the time with us today. I hope you find the day informative and useful. Really excited to get you in truck. And with that, I'm going to hand it over to Osa, our President.

Unknown Executive

executive
#3

Thanks, Chris. As you can see, it is an incredibly exciting time to be at Aurora. I have the pleasure of spending a good portion of my time with our customers and their enthusiasm is simply palpable. I thought that before I get into the numbers, I might share a few stories from the road just so you can get a feel for some of the things that I'm hearing. So last week, I had dinner with the CEO of one of our long-standing customers. And we were talking about S curves and inflection points sharing many of the same stories that Chris was just telling you about. And he said that the external factors or market forces that are often required for adoption to move from one part of the curve to the next had already arrived for autonomous trucking. He then went on to say that the decision to adopt AVs was no longer just a smart one, it was now an urgent one. And that sentiment was actually echoed with another CEO of ours who we had the opportunity to introduce to Secretary of Transportation, Shawn Duffy. As he was talking to Secretary Duffy, he said this marked a high point in his career. He had never before seen such technological momentum, coupled with regulatory acceleration. It's just the two we're working in lockstep with one another. And I'll share one story before I move on. And as CEO of ours, who Mike just happened to be in the room with us today was driving on I-20 when up along beside him, comes the Aurora Driver, hauling his freight and no one behind the wheel and it was just cool. He said it marked a new level of excitement for him and for me. I share these stories you can understand how fun it is to be at Aurora right now. We are in a materially different spot than when I joined 4 years ago. And so with that, let's get into a little bit more of the specifics. When customers come to us, what are they asking about? Well, first and foremost, it is always safety. And at this point, most of our customers and, frankly, even our prospects have had the opportunity to experience the award driver firsthand. They know that the Aurora Driver is one of the safest most capable, most experienced drivers on the road. But we didn't want to stop there. We engage third parties to validate how we approach safety. [indiscernible] came and audited our safety management system. They found that we were highly proficient, reliable, thorough, basically, we passed with flying colors. We then went to edge case, and they did a first of its kind audit of our driverless safety case. They did a rigorous sampling of our facts and evidence and they found that we had reached a whole new standard of transparency when it came to autonomous trucking. After safety, money talks. This is probably the most common conversation that I'm having today. We took ATRI data and looked at total cost of ownership for a traditional driver versus the Aurora Driver. The savings are staggering, upwards of 20% or a full $0.50 per mile. Now there's a lot in this slide, but I really want to break it down into 3 key themes that we keep hearing and talking about. The first is, of course, the driver itself. In this analysis, we compare it against solo driving, which is actually a conservative view. Team driving might be the more comparable approach. But even with solo driving, you see great savings. After the driver, there is fuel. We are regularly seeing 10% fuel efficiency on the lanes we're hauling today, and we see an opportunity of 15% depending on the lane and type of freight. That's quite notable to our customers given diesel prices today and where we expect them to be. The third category is insurance. Dave, our CFO, is going to talk in detail about liability and insurance. So at this point, I will just say that a safer driver is a cheaper driver to ensure. The great thing about these economics for our customers is it affects both sides of a carrier's P&L. What do I mean by that? Let's take the top line. Our truck is not subject to our service limitations, and we don't have a driver that needs to get home. That means we can effectively double the utilization and in turn the revenue for any given truck. Now the bottom line. Any carrier will tell you that this is a razor thin margin business. Every penny counts. Based on the analysis I just showed you on the previous page, there is a ton of opportunity to improve the bottom line as well. But let me make this tangible. We did an analysis. We took our lane Phoenix to Fort Worth. We took a single truck, and we mapped it over the course of a year. You see a doubling of revenue and a sixfold increase in margin. That is an incremental $340,000 in revenue and $160,000 in margin per truck per year. Did I mention these conversations are fun? And then beyond that, beyond safety, beyond the economics, we also want to meet our customers where they are, and that's where endpoints come in. Opening up end points this year has been a great demand and growth driver for us. But beyond just opening the lanes, we want to make sure we're providing the service and support so that our customers cannot only start operating with us. But they can scale operations with us. And with that, I'd like to take the conversation just a little bit deeper in lighting 3 of my favorite people, industry experts and also Aurora customers to the states. Please help me welcome Matt Detmar from Detmar Logistics, Eric Hildenbram from McLean and Daragh Mahon from Werner. Thank you, Gentlemen. So appreciative of you making the trip. And I think we're going to have early fun conversation here. I'm going to actually start the conversation with Daragh. For those of you who were here 2.5 years ago, you remember that Daragh was on this panel with us as well. And I'd like to think back to that moment and then I head to today. There's a lot that's happened. You've approved driverless operations with Aurora. Tell us a little bit about the last 2.5 years and what gave you the conviction to move forward?

Daragh Mahon

attendee
#4

Yes. So thanks for having me first. I think back to 2.5 years ago, it doesn't seem like that long ago. I feel like a top of mind back then were 3 things. First was the tech, was it there? Or was it getting there? Second was safety. And third was reliability. And I think I'll put safety first here because in my mind, that's what we eat, sleep every single day at Warner safety, how safe? How do we drive safety into our fleet. How do we make sure that we maintain that, and we wanted to make sure that you guys could prove a safety case and I think back even prior to that, maybe 2 years before that, the first conversation I had with Sterling and Chris was about safety. So I think you guys have done an excellent job up to that point, but up to this point, you proved your safety case. So we feel like you guys are there from a safety perspective. Now you got to get millions more miles in the road to keep proving it. But I think at this point, millions of miles in the safety case has been proven, and we're very satisfied with that. Second thing is the Tech. Look, I feel really good with the Tech. I don't think there's any question anymore. In fact, we talked about this internally all the time, Tech is there. We're not worried about the Tech. We have some integration work to do, et cetera, but all of that is relatively easy in comparison to the heavy lift you guys have done to this point. And then the third part versus reliability. We put these trucks on the road. We have another safe and we have [indiscernible] reliable. And over the last 8, 9 months, whenever it was, we approved driverless operations. We haven't -- I mean we've run a lot of miles with you, but in comparison to what we run on a daily basis, its not really a lot of miles. So the reliability has been there. Again, you got to run a lot more miles to prove it's there, but we feel really good about where we're at right now. We're still bullish. And I think we're ready to -- we're just ready to keep moving forward to you guys.

Unknown Executive

executive
#5

We really appreciate working alongside of you on this journey. We've learned a lot from you guys as well. And with that, I want to really turn it to Eric and then to Matt. I think Eric Mclean has been working with us for 2 years. What prompted that decision? And where do you see it going from here?

Unknown Attendee

attendee
#6

Yes. I think for us, first, it starts with safety as well. I think that's probably where everyone in the industry is, and we saw an opportunity to have a potentially very safe lever that we could use to grow, right? And that for us was critical. How are we going to manage, our growing middle mile logistics and redistribution operations. Drivers are scarce, as I think we all know. And we need them desperately for our final mile into our customers. And so finding a solution like yours that could help us in that middle mile and deliver the safety, the reliability and those types of kind of opportunities to put our drivers where we really need them was why we turn to you.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#7

Yes. So we've been working with -- first of all, thanks for having me glad to be here. We've been working with Aurora for about a year now, and there's multiple things that prompted us to look at this and go down this journey. Safety, of course, being a big one. The Permian Basin is an incredibly dangerous place on the roads, a lot of traffic, a lot of truck traffic at night. A lot of people are trying to get to these drilling and frac locations to get deliveries on time. Secondly is operational capacity. So not only are we in the trucking business, but we're also in the oil and gas business. So we're in 2 cyclical industries. So the push for innovation and competition is very high. So as we look at the operational capabilities to be able to double our utilization and continue to look at how we can provide our customers a value-driven approach when you look at both those things, it made the most sense for us to go down this path.

Unknown Executive

executive
#8

That's great. I remember the first time I visited in Midland, and there's very little infrastructure there. And I think you guys have a slightly different use case than the long haul we typically talk about. And can you talk about sort of a 60-mile loop that we want perpetually tell the audience a little bit about how that works and why autonomy is helpful in that regard.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#9

Yes. I'll go ahead and kind of explain how the oil and gas logistics base works as well as that could give more clarity. As we look at our trucks, especially on the sand side and you look at pipe and a lot of other commodities that move in the Permian Basin and in different oil and gas basins -- sorry, I lost my train of thought. But as you look at that, most of the drivers, especially in the Permian Basin, do not live in the Permian Basin. They are coming from a lot of the Southeastern United States, different parts of Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico. So almost all the trucks you see are running sleeper cabs, day cabs have never really broke out into that market because drivers don't like to come live in man camps. They don't like to switch trucks because they don't know which driver was driving that truck before was a driver smoking in it. The driver not report something on his pre-trip or post trip. So anybody who's really come to try to work the day cab slip seat model to run 24/7. It's never worked out very well. So we run a sleeper cabs. So our drivers work on average, 3 weeks on, 1 week off. So when you look at that from a utilization perspective on the monthly, you're getting 75% utilization. So now I go into their hours of service, driving about 12 hours a day, okay? So now you cut that in half. And then you also have their 34-hour reset that comes on top of that as well. So when you look at the utilization of the tractor, you're looking at sub-40%. So with what we've seen with Aurora and our drivers are averaging 2, 2.5 truck loads per day getting into the 5 to 6 range on the 60-mile loop is fantastic to see from a utilization perspective. So you're taking that 40% to greater than 90%, so effectively almost more than doubling the utilization. And then on top of that is the trader utilization. So as drivers go into their 3-week shift when they go back home, their trader goes back in the pool. But because their drivers will stage next to the nearest sand mine that they might be picking up from the next day, they're always attached to that trade for the shift. So now not only are we doubling the utilization of the tractor, we're also doubling the utilization of the trailer. So that's where we see a lot of the use case and the optimization for the uptime and utilization of the asset.

Unknown Executive

executive
#10

It's fantastic. And as we've talked before, it's almost insatiable appetite here because diesel prices and the need for oil is just growing. So it's been really fun to watch in partner with you.

Daragh Mahon

attendee
#11

What's going on with diesel prices?

Unknown Executive

executive
#12

We monitor them occasionally. And with that, Daragh, you've been in this industry a long time. You've seen a lot of changes. But in particular, I know you've looked at other potential trucking partners? And what caused you to land on Aurora is differentiated?

Daragh Mahon

attendee
#13

I think we'll there's a couple of things. So first of all, the very -- again, I'll go back to the very first conversation I had with Chris and Sterling in 10, I believe, in the drop yards.

Unknown Executive

executive
#14

We're illuminated.

Daragh Mahon

attendee
#15

And I think the thing that came across most strongly was safety was the first conversation we had. And then you guys instinctively got the driver problem, right, that this is not about replacing drivers. And maybe kind of go on to the drivers for a bit. First of all, the very first job I had after construction when I came to the U.S. 30-something years ago was I got to see the land went driven for one of our competitors. I don't think are in this room, but I can't mention, I'll get fired. But the reality is I am a driver, and I did it for a short period of time, but I understand drivers. I also -- so this makes me sense of that this conversation. No question. I still actually go out and drive a little bit today at times they get me to test drive trucks every now and again. So I have disconnection to drivers and drivers are the lifeblood of our industry. Our founder 1 guy, CL Werner, with a truck, instill that message and that just across the entire company, the drivers are the central part of what we do every day. So we have this connection to drivers. They're not just a guy in a truck or a relating a truck. They are the lifeblood of our company and of our industry. So the thing that Aurora intuitively got when we talk to them was this is not about replacing drivers, right? This is not what this is for, this is about taking the jobs that drivers don't want for us and giving them to a different mode of transportation, making drivers' lives better. Drivers today want to be home as often as possible. They don't want to be on the roads for 2 or 3 or 4 weeks at a time, they want to be home nightly or at least every other night. So we see this as the places that we find it hard to hire drivers to do certain middle mile roads that are long lonely road. We think that that's where this really comes in. And the way we look at it internally is it's almost like another mode of transport. So we do land, we do dedicated, we do intermodal. We do everything and then driverless becomes another thing that we offer to our customers. but it also helps us fill some of the driver shortage that we're experiencing and have been since there was a driver shortage when I took the job 32 years ago. There is still a driver shortage today and it's getting -- it's looking better, it's getting worse. So it helps us fill that, but does not and never will replace drivers. We say this all the time. If you want to become a driver 2-day a Warner, we think you can retire as a driver 30, 35 years from now.

Unknown Attendee

attendee
#16

Can I echo that. I think -- because our choice for Aurora was very similar. It was about the shared values. I mean [indiscernible] has been around for 130 years, and we care a lot about our culture, which is very driver focused as well. And so I think between that and safety, like working with you for 2 years, we feel that our cultures are similar in a way that's very differentiated from some of the other competitors, and it's why we're very happy to be the partner. And for us, as I said, our drivers have to pull into a 7-Eleven parking lot with 6 other cars there and then take 40,000 pounds off of a truck with a handcart. So they're really critical to us and the risks are faced to the customer and we need them to understand this isn't a replacement. This takes you -- now you're doing that versus having to hopefully drive very long miles or kind of very repetitive routes. So we see it the same, and I think that's what makes our partnership really valuable to us. And I would also add that I think you're probably the only one we spoke to ever who didn't think initially that were going to become truckers, right? Now freight take -- so that was a big deal for us. And I think all of the others have finally realized that trucker is tough, it's complicated. It takes years of experience to get there. And I don't think you guys ever felt like that was your role in the industry, which matter to us as well.

Unknown Executive

executive
#17

That's actually a great commentary on why we pick Driver as a Service. I think as Chris alluded to, there are certain things we think we can do better than some. We know there's a lot we can't. And maybe as we talk about driver as a Service, you all know that's when our carriers own and operate the trucks. We provide the driving service. But me how you're thinking about that, why you're excited about that. Maybe, Matt, I'll start with you sort of why a transition to DaaS would be an inevitable choice for you?

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#18

Yes. So we've been in business for about 15 years now. So we purchased tractors, we use leased tractors. We do maintenance lease programs as well. And what makes most sense for us because of the use of the application. It's on the road, but it's also very vocational as well sometimes our miles are 10%, 15% offroad. So the maintenance aspect of it is incredibly important to us for the uptime of the asset. So as we buy the asset, and we like to bring our own maintenance in-house because that really helps us accelerate the uptime as well. Now I mean, of course, buying trucks. It also has some tax benefits as well. So there is that case as well. But you're being able to handle the maintenance, bring it in-house. I mean as we look at scaling it, looking at because it's going to be -- it's going to be a alternate path to revolutionize and we're actually really, really excited about that as well. So that is one of our biggest drivers going into DaaS Model really.

Unknown Executive

executive
#19

That's great. Eric, how are you guys thinking about either the DaaS evolution or just the next several years at McLean with Autonomy?

Unknown Attendee

attendee
#20

Yes. I think similarly, I think we have a lot of infrastructure built to take care of trucks whether it's our own or we have partners that do it. And so I think that having us be able to use our scale to do that while you do the technology and the thing that makes you special, probably makes the most sense. There are also tax and other benefits, as you note. I think as we go into the future, we just see so much opportunity, right? I'm always on the phone with you telling you about my next great idea. He's very polite, by the way.

Unknown Executive

executive
#21

A fun conversation.

Unknown Attendee

attendee
#22

And I'm very excited to kind of expand from the lane we're running now, which has been incredibly successful to some of these places that we mentioned about our drivers really don't want to do and are really critical and have this consistent freight running on this lane. And it's always like who wants to do that overnight trip to wherever, right? And we'd love to get that expanded as fast as possible under the model.

Unknown Executive

executive
#23

That's great. I know we want to spend some time getting questions from the audience. But before we do that, could each of you, maybe starting with Daragh talk me through what does the strategy look like for you over the next 3 to 5 years? If you come back in 2.5 years from now, what are you going to be saying to the audience then?

Daragh Mahon

attendee
#24

Yes. I think for us, it really is about taking -- I don't want to say tentative steps, but that's -- we've gotten our toe right now. Let's take the next move. It's about really proving out the safety case, making sure that we feel -- we are 100% comfortable but let's make sure that we understand all the nuances of it. It's about the reliability that I talked about. And I think it's about really exploring what lanes this is best suited to. Like we have a massive network countrywide across all 48 states. There are lanes that we are already now that this will -- because we have trouble getting drivers are keeping drivers in those lanes. So I think there's lanes that we can do it. There's certainly the concept of utilization like completely utilizing this massive investment in an asset that we have that we maybe get, we don't get enough of today or we could get more of it. So I think we want to explore all of those areas, safety, reliability, the tech, let's see the tech keep moving forward because it's fantastic. But how do we get to the point where I think we start to strip the cab of these trucks of the creature comforts and work with you guys in that. So that becomes less expensive even. And then I think it's really finally about how do we fit this into our network and how do we make the best use of it. So I think a couple of years from now, hopefully, we're much deeper into this, and we've got more lanes operating. And we've given our drivers a better life and a better job across the board. I think that's what we'd like to be.

Unknown Executive

executive
#25

Well, Eric, how do you see it?

Unknown Attendee

attendee
#26

What Daragh said. I really agree. I think it's about use cases for us. which different use cases, can we -- can we use this in the north when it's snowing right, like that kind of technology that keep pushing to find the different use cases, so we have more flexibility because that's what we really need.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#27

Yes, for us, of course, we're running in the Permian Basin looking at areas beyond. But today, we're brokering out about 75% of our freight in the Permian Basin. By the end of the year, we'll be running about 1,200, 1,300 loads a day. So we're seeing the opportunity continue to grow out there for us. So as we're continuing to prove out the safety case, which everything we've seen has been absolutely phenomenal on the Aurora side for the safety, but the safety aspect. We do expect to get into 100s of trucks over the next couple of years. So again, we're still proving out in the deliveries closer to the well site, which I know we're looking at doing very, very soon. And as we continue to get there, and I don't see anything really getting in the way of that. I do expect us to scale pretty significantly with Aurora.

Unknown Executive

executive
#28

Great. Well, we're looking forward to all the expansion opportunities and continue together. I do want to open it up for questions from the audio -- Okay, in the black suit in the front, please.

Scott Group

analyst
#29

It's Scott Group from Wolfe Research. Thanks for doing this panel. I guess, I'm guessing you saw the slide earlier showing the total customer receivings. Just curious, like each of your perspectives, what you're seeing? And then maybe Daragh if you're if you think this is best is like a middle mile application, like does that change in any way the savings opportunity? And then maybe just like my last question would be like, when do you think you transition brokering trucks to Aurora to becoming -- using Aurora as a driver as a Service model.

Daragh Mahon

attendee
#30

So on the economics, first, we're negotiating, so I'm not going to comment. Look, I think if I had to say the one area that -- there's 2 areas we probably are working on we are working on right now extensively with Aurora, one is legal just contract work, which we will get through, it's offline and the other is economics. And I will have been quite honest, we have a gap. We've got to figure this out. I think the economics become viable at scale, I mean, really viable at scale, where nobody is eating some of the cost. And I don't think that is too far ahead of us. And I think that it sometime in the next few months, we will get to a point where we believe that economically, we can make this work. But -- there's work to do there. The second part of your question yes, I think absolutely, where we run changes, the economics for us changes the liability. For us, honestly, we believe the long-haul route is the best, the middle mile where we're running 500, 600, 700, 2000 miles, whatever that happens to be the longer we could run, the more utilization we can get out of the asset, the better fuel economy we get once we're running those long hauls when we can run at 22 hours a day or 20 hours a day out of 24, all of that matters, shorter length of haul doesn't allow us to do quite that much. So I think the economics will get there, but we believe we have a gap that we've got to work through, I think we'll get through it. I think it comes at scale. And then I think, yes, definitely, the lanes we operate in change the financial model.

George Gianarikas

analyst
#31

George Gianarikas from Canaccord Genuity. I'd like to ask about reliability, which mentioned a few times, is that something that just proves itself out over time, just more miles under your belt? And then second, what particular parts are you focused on from a reliability perspective. Is it the autonomous kit? Is it the redundant systems in the truck?

Unknown Executive

executive
#32

Maybe Eric can take that as a lawyer on the panel.

Unknown Attendee

attendee
#33

I think, I can't believe you outed me in front of all these people. I think that -- the reliability seems really good right now. We hope to just keep proving that out, right? We're not -- we're seeing basically 100%. I don't want to say I can't do it 99%, whatever percent uptime on stuff that's controllable, right? There's the stuff that is in controllable or someone on our side too, right, getting the freight where it needs to be. So I think that proves itself out over time. We just need more miles, more trucks running and you're going to see -- but I have no -- I have an expectation that we'll just see that continue to be very positive. I forgot the last part of your question. Sorry.

George Gianarikas

analyst
#34

Are there any particular parts you focused on?

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#35

I think we're looking at the whole truck and the whole system, right? And I do think it's kind of early to say which parts of the driver system we have to watch. We know what parts of the truck to watch. And I have a feeling if we can get everyone aligned that because the truck needs maintenance in such a very specific way, particularly if you can get the utilization that we all want, that fixing or updating or all those things shouldn't actually to more downtime, right, because we should be able to do that while we're doing maintenance that you have to do on the physical asset.

Ravi Shanker

analyst
#36

Ravi Shanker, Morgan Stanley. A question for Daragh and Eric. You were both very passionate about how you feel about drivers and how you're both going to be a very driver first organization for a long time to come. Have you had this conversation with your drivers? Is this message resonating? And if not, kind of how long or what do you think you need to build that trust?

Daragh Mahon

attendee
#37

I mean, firstly, yes, we've been very intentional over the last 5 or 6 years where we talk about driverless operations at every opportunity just last week at Driver Appreciation Week. It's a topic that comes up. We get a lot of questions on it. We've been very open with drivers, not hiding anything. But the message is the same like we want drivers to understand that if you want to take a job of weren't today, if you're out Werner today, you're probably going to retire Werner today if that's what you choose to do. Because we keep getting reiterating that message that today, depending on what numbers you take, whether it's from the ATA or the DOT, there's a shortage of anywhere between 100,000 and 200,000 drivers right now and that only grows even in Aurora and all of the driverless operations trucks, most bullish case, we still need 1 million drivers in the next decade to come into the market. So we've been very open about that. We've told drivers what we plan to do. We've told them that we're doing this slowly, methodically and with a lot of intention and thought, but they know and we certainly talk to them.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#38

You can't hide things from drivers. It's the first thing you learn working for drivers. They have the best communication network you've ever seen in your life. Yes, we've been completely open about it. I think we have a little advantage of Werner there, which is, again, these guys have to deliver into small stores using hand trucks or liftgates. So they sort of don't -- I don't have -- they have a fear because they know that right now, that job is very safe and will be, we think, for the foreseeable future. So but yes, we've been very open about it. And we were ready for pushback, right? drivers always ask great questions. But I think the -- they actually get a little excited about it, too, and they get the safety point as well. The good drivers want more good drivers on the road and they sort of view it that way.

Unknown Attendee

attendee
#39

Yes. And I very much resound what he's saying on that. We conduct a weekly driver call with our drivers, I get on and do a fully unscripted Q&A. It does come up often, but these guys mentioned drivers are the lifeblood of what we do. None of us would be even sitting on the stage if we didn't have a good capable drivers to help us drive our business forward. So what Eric said is you do see good drivers, they get really excited about it because sometimes your good drivers are running next 2 drivers that might not be the best drivers. So when they know that you're building a team that's adding more reliability to the roads, more safety to the roads, you do see the more professional drivers to be very excited about this technology.

David Vernon

analyst
#40

David Vernon from Bernstein. Thanks for participating in the panel. Eric and Daragh, I guess, it sounds like you're talking about a future where the driverless technology is doing the work your drivers don't want to do and is somehow complementary with your existing drivers. But if you're not taking the driver out of the cab, how does that affect the economics of the implementation, the first and last mile cost. When I talk to trucking companies about adoption of the stuff there seems to be less certainty around what the actual total cost could be because of some of those business model issues around the first mile to last mile, things like that. Could you talk a little bit about how this -- how the economics or your view of the economics of these technologies are affected by the fact that you might still also still have a driver in the cab?

Daragh Mahon

attendee
#41

I think it's different types of freight, right? I think you said it may be in a good way, which is like you use intermodal when that makes sense to use drivers when that makes sense to use Aurora when that makes sense. So I think if you looked at the whole company, how would affect McLean's economics, I don't know that I want to get into that, what I do see is a tremendous amount of value that can be driven TCO wise on millions upon millions of miles McLean runs today. Right? Because I have -- because of redistribution and other things, I have to move full truckloads of freight from A to B before they get it broken up or even gets unhooked and then goes into the city and makes all the deliveries. And if I can get savings on those millions of miles. Sure, I'm not getting savings on these other millions of miles, I still need a driver, but that's very beneficial to my economics as a whole.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#42

Yes. I mean same answer. I mean we can -- if we have a driverless operation, we wouldn't have a driver in the truck between Houston and Atlanta, for example. And if we're doing that at 100 times a week or whatever the number is significant savings. But I think we have to just think about the market is growing, right? Retail is growing, retail is our biggest customer. So we're going to be moving more freight, not less freight over time, need more drivers, drivers are hard to get. So there is a hole that it fills for us just by nature of the fact that we're growing. And then I think it's also important to realize that there's other costs besides just the cost of the driving a truck. But to get a driver in a truck, we have to recruit the driver. We have to train the driver. Like all of those costs are significant, as you guys know. So I think when you add up all the economics and when we get to a point where we're happy with our negotiation and then when this gets to scale, that's the -- again, I don't know if the Aurora people will disagree me here, but I think that's the real inflection point for us is when they get to scale, and all of a sudden, those prices start to drop, not just for the truck and the hardware in the truck, but put the tech and everything that Aurora does becomes more economically viable, becomes more economically viable for us too. So I think the driver out of certain routes helps us it doesn't eliminate. We said want drivers talking to our customers. So it doesn't eliminate that. We have a similar to you. Like we have retail stores that we unload and walk pallets into as well. So we still have those drivers at the final mile points, but middle mile for sure.

Daragh Mahon

attendee
#43

I'm sure we have to transition. I do want to know like on the stuff we run with Aurora, we don't want a driver in the truck. There is no driver in the truck just to make sure that was clear.

Unknown Executive

executive
#44

Great. I think we have time for one more for this panel.

Andres Sheppard-Slinger

analyst
#45

Andre Shepard from Cantor Fitzgerald. First and foremost, thank you for the Aurora team to putting this day together and congrats on all the great success. I think the team has done a great job articulating the value proposition, cost savings, higher efficiency increased safety, of course. I'm curious if we can maybe better understand like your aha moment, like how long did it take for you visualize it, understand it, implement it, how long can it take you to convert into a customer. I'm curious if you could maybe talk about kind of what kind of industry reaction do you expect? Are you the consensus? Or are you the outlier? Just curious to kind of understand like what really drove it in home for you. Obviously, we talked about the benefits, but was there something specific and how long is that.

Unknown Executive

executive
#46

Maybe we'll start with Matt is the most recent adopter.

Unknown Attendee

attendee
#47

Yes. I mean the aha moment is doubling utilization for us really. And then again, mentioning the safety case, we're driving down Interstate 20. I don't know if you ever driven down Interstate 20, between middle and low debt, but it's a disaster, and it's disaster all the time. It's always under construction. There's always accidents. There's always traffic. And since we've deployed this technology with Aurora, which we started at the beginning of this year, right, it's almost been an absolute perfect safety case. So that's an aha moment for us, the ability to double utilization Customer feedback has been great. There's been a lot of excitement about it, especially right now. I mean, you've seen capacity shortages in the broader freight market over the last 8 to 12 months. Historically, in oil and gas, we run about 8 to 12 months behind. So we're really starting to see the driver crunch right now, a big capacity crunch, which is developing even more excitement from our customers in the industry. So those 2 moments really being the aha moment for us and the industry, again, is very excited to look at this. When you look at oil and gas, they've been under significant pressure, right, to get their operation or control. Like no one wants boomer bust anymore, everybody wants to see significant returns. So if they can baseload their operations with guaranteed capacity helping to fix their cost long term brings excitement. So all in all, those have been really the biggest positive things for us and what we've seen.

Unknown Executive

executive
#48

Multiple aha moments.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#49

For me, I don't know if it was aha, but when our 20-plus year safety person walked into my office and said, okay, you can go meet Aurora because they had validated that the safety worked. I say, -- can I go now? No, you can so that -- that was probably a great. I don't know if it had was a real fun moment in my office because I thought, okay, we're really going to do this. That was pretty exciting.

Daragh Mahon

attendee
#50

Yes. I think there's multiple for me. I mean as a tech guy is a geek like it was the first time I sat in there or a truck like you go wholly? I mean this really works. And that's been almost how it's been 5 years ago. So like for me, that was just exciting. It was one of the reasons I came to Werner was just this concept of autonomous trucking and how it would get there, loved what I saw. So that was a big aha moment for me. This actually really works. And I think the second one was there's probably multiple trucks -- like the safety case always felt like the hardest one because everybody was struggling with it and Aurora took a totally different approach to it. And when they finally we sat down 2 years ago and went through it in great detail. There was multiple aha moments during that period, well, okay, this really is safe, this can work [indiscernible] there, safety is there. Now we just got to work everything else. But I think in general, it's been a series of harm moments, and it's been fantastic to be involved.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#51

Lawyers don't have aha moment.

Unknown Executive

executive
#52

0 I was going to say, Eric, I thought it was the first time we met. That's a great note to bring us home on. Thank you all for your partnership and your conviction, and we're really excited to be on this ride with you all. Thank you. And now I'd like to turn it over to our Senior Vice President of Hardware Products, Sean Berna, who will talk to us about our multi-platform path to scale. Please welcome [indiscernible]

Unknown Attendee

attendee
#53

Thanks [indiscernible] so when it comes to physical AI, it's hard to be more physical than autonomous trucking. And as with all physical AI, the actual hardware is critical. And frankly, hardware is cool. So our hardware road map and multi-vehicle approach is both deliberate and highly differentiated. We're the only autonomous trucking company with such a deep partnership ecosystem and such a carefully thought out road map and that is what will enable true industrial scale. Our second-generation hardware kit is currently being produced at our contract manufacturer, Fabrinet. Fabrinet is a top-tier CM based in Thailand with over $4.5 billion of annual revenue and the 3 million square feet of manufacturing space. This is our 8,500 square foot clean room in [indiscernible] Thailand. The Aurora Kit was designed with 3 key objectives: first, meaningful unit cost reduction on the order of 50%. Secondly, increased reliability to 1 million miles, a 1 million miles drives down the cost per mile. In addition, this has been tested to demanding OEM specifications with the goal of enabling line-side production. And it has the headroom to scale up to 1,500 trucks. It's already on the road power and driverless operations today, and we're ramping to build over 50 kits per week this year. Once the kit is finished, it heads to our outfit partner, Roche in Livonia, Michigan. Roche has 5 decades of excellence in vehicle upfit. They have extensive experience with autonomous vehicles. We have a 20,000 square foot Aurora dedicated facility with a multi-station assembly line. The first trucks are already off the line and here in Texas today. We're establishing capacity to 20 per week beginning next month and 20 per week is 1,000 trucks in a year. So now let's take a moment to look at what's happening in Michigan right now. That's pretty fine. I got to be asked. I think you were showing off a little bit. So our second generation hardware is also being installed line side onto the Volvo VNL autonomous truck at Volvo's New River Valley Virginia manufacturing facility. Volvo Autonomous Solutions recently announced that we will have driverless operations in the first quarter of next year, and these trucks will be powered by the Aurora Driver. Volvo expects to exit 2027 with 300 driverless trucks, paving the way for industrial scaling in 2028. The second-generation hardware supports our initial scaling to over 1,000 trucks. But now let's talk about our long-term strategy. We're partnering with Aumivio to develop our third-generation kit. This will be industrialized automotive-grade hardware with tens of thousands, enabling tens of thousands of autonomous trucks over time. It is an industry-first hardware-as-a-service structure. So our hardware cost is paid per mile. That means no new upfront capital expense for our customers, and it enables an asset-light model for Aurora to support our SaaS-like gross margin strategy objective. And for Aumivio, this partnership unlocks a brand-new recurring revenue stream. The incentives are mutually aligned across the entire ecosystem and everyone benefits the more miles our trucks drive. The start of production is expected in the second half of next year, with material economic benefit in 2028 and beyond. Our third-generation hardware kit will power all of our truck platforms, whether it's upfit with the International LT Series at Roche or [ LineSight ] install at Volvo and PACCAR. This multi-platform approach allows for customers preferences and perspectives and provide scalable supply. This will position us to meet this market-defining opportunity. Now I'd like to welcome panel partners to join me here on stage to talk about the ecosystem we're building together. Please help me welcome Jeremy McLean from Aumivio. Noel, [indiscernible] from PACCAR, Brad Catani from Rauch and Sasko Suglob from Boloutonomous Solutions. Thanks, everyone, for joining me. Let's start with you, Brad, from Roche. Roche has dedicated facility to upfitting Aurora's second-generation hardware onto trucks. Why is this program so important for Roche?

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#54

Well, as a -- we're a product development company. We're a contract manufacturer, and we have products of our own. So we very much understand urgency and importance for our customers to get their products to market as fast as possible and of quality. So it's near and dear to our hearts. And also, we have, as a company, 50 years of reputation for delivering for our customers and [indiscernible] So it's a very important program to us.

Unknown Executive

executive
#55

Great. [indiscernible] So together with Volvo Trucks, that has made a remarkable progress towards line site integration of the Aurora Driver. What makes the depth and velocity of the Aurora relationship unique to you? And as you execute on your commercial autonomous road map?

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#56

I mean -- it has been a long journey, right?

Unknown Executive

executive
#57

Yes.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#58

The first time we met you guys was 2017 or something in Mountain View. I think at that point in time, you were like 20, 30 persons or so. You are a completely different company today. One year later, we integrated for the first time the Aurora Driver with the Volvo Truck, a European FH. And we tested that worked out in a fantastic way. And to be honest, we felt that we, in a way, clicked on many, many aspects with Aurora already from the start, safety. We have talked about safety already. We both share the same values when it comes to safety, super important, the most important topic for autonomous. We aligned on responsibility splits. One thing that stood out as well was that you really wanted to do or Aurora really wanted to do this together with us and not as the other players, and we met all at that point in time, where I said more, give us the truck and then we will take care of the rest. So it's a long-lasting partnership that we value a lot. And just to emphasize on the partnership, this is not about Aurora providing a driver to us and then we integrate it or we provide a truck with some [indiscernible] files to Aurora to integrate. It is really a joint program. We work side by side in developing and integrating and commercializing the solutions. So I think we have built something very, very strong here.

Unknown Executive

executive
#59

Jeremy. So Tier 1 industrial relation is super important to get to scale. And we're incredibly proud of the partnership we've built together. Why is this program Central Aumivio's growth strategy? And how do you view this opportunity?

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#60

Yes. I mean first of all, we're a very new but a very old company. So we having spun off from Continental just last year, a year ago. We've got a long legacy and it's a very long story to Saska's point, building building safety into products at scale. So if you want to -- what do we do well, we build safe, reliable products at large scale. And we've been working in ADAS, and I'll tell me for many, many years. This is roughly 3 decades. We put our first automotive radar sensor into the market in 1999. And I've been working personally on autonomy for many years, and we've been working personally on autonomy for many years, and it was about finding the right point in time, what is the inflection point when it makes sense to bring that expertise, building safe, reliable products at large commercial, industrial scale to autonomy. And exactly that moment is here, and the partnership has been running for a couple of years. And I think the interesting thing about the partnership was the exactly seeing the need to be able to prove that the technology was ready and was safe and could be deployed and in parallel, making sure that ready for that industrial scale. And that's what we've been doing. And the third generation hardware is back there. And it's exactly that inflection point that makes it exciting for us because that is the next growth opportunity. We typically grow with volumes. And there, you get a kind of saturated market if you look at ADAS. And it's about how do we unlock that next opportunity, you unlock that next opportunity by bringing autonomy to industrial scale. So we're quite excited about it.

Unknown Executive

executive
#61

Nice. Turning to PACCAR, Noel. The freight industry, as we've heard earlier, continues to face a lot of challenges. What are you hearing from your customers about the prospects and value of autonomy?

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#62

Yes. Thank you. And thank you, Sandro, for having me on the panel. The customer panel that was up here earlier, did a great job kind of answering this. But I think the big change has been from a focus on the technology to discussions now about the business efficiency opportunities. It's really pivoted with our customers, and there's a huge conversation about just the challenges the industry is facing with the diesel prices with labor shortages. And they want solutions that are safe, reliable, making sure that they're efficient in their business because really, the business is there and successful making money. So they're shifting to how can they incorporate this technology into their businesses to be more efficient. And at the end of the day, it's not just about our customers that want this technology, but it's what will it do for them to deliver their customers more reliably freight on time, meeting their commitments at a scalable option. And so they're very excited about where this can go for them and how they can incorporate it into their business.

Unknown Executive

executive
#63

All right. Let's go back to you, Brad. A lot of people may not be that familiar with upfit model. Could you walk through how the [indiscernible] process works and how we can get to 20 trucks per week.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#64

Absolutely. So we saw a quick 2-minute version of it in the run footage is great. It really starts with the -- there's 8 overall steps that happen. There's many stations in the manufacturing process that you can see. Step 1 is we received the vehicle, we inspect it, make sure it meets the specifications and it's good to proceed to the next step. Once we get into our facility, we wash all the trucks, our certified technicians then start actually decontenting the trucks, taking the parts off, getting it ready for the hardware system. The third step is the fabrication. So that's when we're drilling holes, we're cutting holes into the body panels and the truck to actually prep it for the hardware install. Simultaneously, we're doing off-line subassembly. So a lot of the components that go into ruck, they still require some form of assembly that we do in our facility offline to where we can -- it's a lot more efficient and repeatable to do it that way. And then once those subassemblies are complete, they move to the main line, which you saw, and they get install in the vehicle. Really the fifth step is the installing of the actual hardware, the autonomous equipment. That's done through our MES system, our manufacturing system. We have digital work instructions, everything talks to our system, torques, traceability as those get installed. The sixth kind of step is kind of throughout the entire process, which is in process quality. So we don't just wait until the end to check the [indiscernible] for build what we're supposed to be building, that is built in across the entire process from when that truck arrives at our facility all the way to the end throughout that process. We're checking and making sure we're doing what we're supposed to be doing as we go. So Seventh part of the process is the bring-up part. So that's when the truck is -- everything is really installed. That's really to bring the drug up, test the software, make sure everything -- it's really a functionality check of everything that was just installed and make sure that's operating properly. And then the final step is the final quality sign-off. So our quality team will go through and check to make sure that everything is completed, that's supposed to be completed. There's no open items need addressed and that the vehicle is 100% ready to go to Aurora.

Unknown Executive

executive
#65

And how are we doing on getting to 20 a week?

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#66

We are on plan. So facility is an [indiscernible] up and running. We're fully staffed. All of our equipment, tools, fixtures. Those are all validated up and running. And as of last week, we actually just brought on our second shift operation. So we're building trucks 16 hours per day right now.

Unknown Executive

executive
#67

So let's go back to you, Noel. So PACCAR is known for being very disciplined and having a very responsible approach to new vehicle introduction. As we work together towards defining the third-generation integration, how do you see the autonomy ready truck fitting into the advancement of Peterbilt and Kenworth in general?

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#68

Yes. We do have a very disciplined approach to new product develop PACCAR, whether it's new powertrains, it's advanced safety systems, it's connectivity and now autonomy. We follow very similar processes. And that's why it's been a joint really to partner with Aurora to come up with a way that we can have this new technology in line on our Peterbilt and [indiscernible] products. And it's really -- the reason we're so disciplined in how we approach new technology and integrating new technology into our trucks is because we need to make sure that we are delivering safe, proven, reliable products to our customers, as well as the infrastructure to support them once they leave our facilities. And so it's really the approach that we take in the partnership with Aurora that we're following.

Unknown Executive

executive
#69

Great, Sasco. So as you go out and engage with major fleet operations about the Bovo Autonomous Solutions offering, how would you characterize that discussion?

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#70

I mean the -- I would say that the discussions we have had -- or we have with the fleets are going extremely well. We have had an approach where we said early on, let's not go out and talk to everyone because it creates a lot of expectations, let's instead join forces with like a handful of 5 to 10 customers that you -- that we work extremely tight with in a way in a partnership approach. And -- we have done that and built the sort of the ecosystem, developed the solutions together with them. And now when we have announced that we are launching in quarter 1 next year, Q1 2027, we are launching by the end of next year, we should have 300-plus trucks in operation, then we have opened up and talk to more customers and the interest is huge. And what is -- have in mind when we talk about those numbers, these are purpose-built trucks for autonomy. With the redundancies in place for the safety-critical systems with the Aurora Driver integrated in our manufacturing facility in New River Valley, which has been an important thing for us. And and our manufacturing facility in Euro Valley, that's really like the flagship of the Volvo Group, where all our Volvo trucks are coming out, and we have already built the first batches of trucks coming out from the factory and as I said, 300 by the end of the year. So huge interest. I can share some examples. Last week, we had a discussion with one of the big fleets that are super interested because today, they have problems, they have to turn down business. They don't have drivers. So they really see autonomous as the alternative here so that they can capture that business. Another one, one of the big ones they said, we want half of the 300 directly. So I would say that the confidence is high that we should be able to allocate those trucks.

Unknown Executive

executive
#71

Great. So back to you, Jeremy. So under the Hardware as a Service structure, Aumivio's economics are actually tied to operation of the fleet operation of the kits. How does this mutual incentive shape prioritization and execution at Aumivio?

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#72

Yes. It's really about aligned incentives, and I think that's the important thing we heard about it earlier in the earlier panel as well. Our traditional business scales with volume maybe scales with software, defined vehicles and so on. But if you look beyond that and where we stand here with autonomy, it's all about as a service business -- and we see it scaling in a very different way. It of course, scales with miles. The value of autonomous trucks, especially comes with reliable, safe, reliable and quality service. And of course, when we build a model around that, we find the unit economics that help us to recuperate those investments, which is, of course, important. -- but it also aligns the incentives to make sure that when we design together with Aurora, that third-generation kit, we designed it in a way that it's going to operate over the full life cycle -- and then we measure the performance against that target, by the way, it actually operates in the field, and we get incentivized to design it properly and as well to make sure that it operates properly in exactly that way. So it's driving a different kind of business model for us. We did that on purpose with the vision that, that is one of the next frontiers as far as business models in our kind of Tier 1 space as a service business where we build that into the hardware, and we maintain it over its life, together with the fleet partners, together with the OEs in a way that generates new value streams and generates value for the end customer and the end customer in this case, it's not a consumer, but the fleets.

Unknown Executive

executive
#73

- Great. Thanks Thanks, Jeremy. Actually, at this point, we'd like to open it up to questions. So we've got quite a few.

Colin Rusch

analyst
#74

This is Colin Rusch from Oppenheimer. This is really for the OEMs. I'm curious about how you're thinking about single source risk? And how you manage that? You talked about discussing with multiple partners as this industry starts to take shape and scale, how are you thinking about that risk managing that and preparing for multiple partners from a technology perspective.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#75

Yes. So our approach at PACCAR is really to develop the truck as a system. So we call an ABP. So autonomous vehicle platform so that when we can, in the future, as the need grows, we can bring on more partners. Aurora is obviously the one we're working with right now. And then it's really a platform approach for us so that we can grow in the future.

Unknown Attendee

attendee
#76

Yes, similar answer from my side. So we are also developing our truck, our autonomy enabled truck in a platform with a platform approach that we call COST. So this is not something that is specific for autonomy. It's how we develop all our products. So COST stands for common architecture and shared technology. So we developed that the autonomous truck according to that. We already have 2 partners that we are doing this with. So it's the same product, the same platform for several partners. And with this approach, we should be able to bring the autonomy also to different regions because we have other trucks in Europe, for example. So it will make it faster and easier for us to also scale in other regions on other truck specification on different brands. We also have both Mac Trucks and Renault Trucks within the Volvo Group.

Ravi Shanker

analyst
#77

Ravi Shanker, Morgan Stanley. A question to PACCAR and Volvo. Again, we can debate the timing and the slope of the curve, but it's very clear that the trucking industry is changing. So I would love to know your internal discussions on what the truck market looks like 10, 20 years from now, who's going to be buying your trucks, how many OEMs, et cetera. And also with both Aumivio and Aurora moving to a per mile fee to monetize the product, is there any thought on you guys doing that for the truck itself and how that may potentially change your business model over time?

Unknown Attendee

attendee
#78

I can start. Let's start with the business models. We have been clear from the start that -- and this is based on the dialogue we have had with the customers actually where -- in the early stages, they told us more or less, hey, guys, we work tightly together with you, and we would like to continue to do that. We want you to take the full responsibility. So we have said that the starting phase we will offer this as a transport as a service. Basically, like what everyone else, I would say, is doing at this stage. And have in mind that we have been operating in a commercial setup almost for 2 years. So the first phase is transport as a service. Then we have always said that we are extremely humble to different types of models. And we are already now looking into additional business models, where it's more that the customer operates and so on and so on. So we will, of course, follow what will happen in the industry and listen in. So we would be stupid if we go the other direction when everyone wants to something else. So that's on the business model. And then the first question was the industry looks like in 10 years. I think we had -- or we had a Capital Markets Day when it was at mid this year, where Neil's our President talked about that, that in 5 years or so, every -- every tenth truck will be an autonomous truck. So it will we will start to see a lot of autonomous trucks going forward. That's what we see.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#79

Yes. On the PACCAR side, I mean, I would definitely echo the Volvo view is that we're really partnering with our customers and want to deliver what our customers want. So whether that's truck as a service or per mile kind of approach, from a [indiscernible] sense, for example, or if they just want to purchase the vehicle and then work with Aurora separately. We're really open to making sure that our business model is what customers want and deserve. We're not going to push on them. And so we've been very open in talking with our customers around that. And then on where we see the industry in 10 years, other than PACCAR obviously growing market share rapidly. Thank you for laughing. It's going to happen, but thank you for recognizing the joke. Other than that, it's really we're going to make sure that we are ready to deliver what customers need and want and grow their business with us because it's really all about partnering with our customers.

Mark Delaney

analyst
#80

Mark Delaney from Goldman Sachs. A question for Noel and Sasco. You both mentioned you're developing your autonomous trucks as platforms and would consider other technology partners or maybe already are in some instances. Can you just talk a little bit more around your experiences specifically with Aurora and how you see Aurora relative to some of the other competitors? Why are you working with Aurora now and just other things that may stand out from Aurora compared to other technology providers?

Unknown Executive

executive
#81

Yes. I think PACCAR, as we mentioned, PACCAR's approach very disciplined in product development. And so we partnered with Aurora because we see that they also are very disciplined focused on safety, and that's our #1 focus is we want to make sure that we have safety at the forefront, proven technology, reliability for our customers. And that's why we partnered with Aurora and are working with them to make sure that we have Kamath and Peterbilt trucks that will support the Aurora Driver. I forgot your second part of your question, sorry. Well, I mean, we picked Aurora for a reason, and I think that's probably enough said for me on the PACCAR side.

Unknown Attendee

attendee
#82

Yes. I mean I touched upon it in one of the previous questions where we have felt that already from the start that we share a lot of the values that are important for us in terms of safety and -- so we click there. And then again, I mean, the partnership is -- it's almost like -- it's like a marriage. So we need to find your ways and we have done that and build something strong. We have not always agreed on everything, but I sorted it out. So it's really a joint program, joint initiative. We work hand in hand. Now when we are talking about integrating Aurora into our manufacturing facility, we do that together with Aurora. So we really take care of everything. It's not always easy discussions, but we -- in a true partnership way we solve it. So it is, again, a true partnership that we feel is extremely strong, and we value a lot -- then we have other partners. I don't want to go in here and start to compare. But yes, we value Aurora a lot in our partnerships.

Unknown Executive

executive
#83

Okay. I think we have time for one more.

Ryan Sigdahl

analyst
#84

Ryan Sigdahl, Craig-Hallum. Maybe this is for everyone. Just from a capacity standpoint, Brad, it's great to hear you guys are on track, but we always want more and look to the future. So as you think about capacity expansion, if demand is there, can you ramp faster go quicker. And then maybe for Sasco and Noel from an OEM assembly line standpoint, talk about retooling, if the demand is there, again, what the process is, how quickly you can actually ramp volume capacity? Should there be the demand quicker?

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#85

As mentioned, we're completely on plan right now to reach the planned volume that we're talking about. Our team feels after building. Obviously, we have many vehicles off the line. We feel very confident good in meeting or exceeding that with our current line. And then we always have the option to expand capacity if needed. So we're very flexible on the route side. So if that demand were to increase, we can pretty rapidly grow that operation.

Unknown Executive

executive
#86

Yes. And then on the PACCAR side, we're really -- the program that we're working on right now is to really tool and have in place the online installation of ABP. So that's really for as the customer demand grows, we are ready to achieve that.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#87

Yes. And on our side, like the whole program has been driven with scaling and industrialization in mind from day one. So this is not about being about producing 10 trucks and go to hit the pilots. It has been with scaling industrialization in mind. We have in the plan, as we said, 300-plus trucks from our factory next year, and then we want to be able to go to 1,000. So I don't see that, that will be the problem to meet from a manufacturing perspective to meet the demand. Just would address it from the Aumivio side as well, there's a plant in New Broncos, Texas, 4.5 hours south of here, which is exactly being ramped up to be prepared to produce that third-generation hardware that's in the back of the room at scale to be ready to hit those volume demands. And I would encourage you all to go in the back and take a look at that third generation of hardware that is now designed complete this in design validation and the product validation runs will happen from the plant in Texas here in the very near future. So it's really exciting to see that we ramp towards scale. That's really an exciting milestone for the industry, for the business, for the partnerships and something we're excited about.

Unknown Executive

executive
#88

Well, thank you, everyone. Really appreciate your time here. Okay. So now I'll hand it over to our CFO, David Maday. He will have more to share with you starting with the conversation about insurance. So thank you.

David Maday

executive
#89

All right. That was super exciting. Thanks to the panelists for participating I think when Sasco mentioned, we've had our share of arguments that could be with me, so that's interesting. We've talked a lot from the beginning about safety and the importance of safety and we're getting strong receptivity from customers, from our OEM partners and as well from our insurance providers. And so I know it's top of mind to many of you, how the insurance and liability piece is going to work. So we are going to be joined if this all works out brilliantly, be a video link from London. We're going to be joined by Chris Moore. So Chris, is the Chief Underwriting Officer at Apollo, I bought. This is a syndicate for Lloyd's of London. They are 1 of the recognized leaders in complex specialized technology and mobility risk. They were the first and really leading the way with companies like Uber, Airbnb and of course, Aurora. Chris has a background in mathematics and machine learning engineering so as a hell a lot smarter than me. But he also understands how to look at potential liabilities through a distinct quantitative lens. And so hopefully, here, we're going to be able to be joined by Chris. Hey Chris, can you hear us?

Unknown Attendee

attendee
#90

Yes.

David Maday

executive
#91

Excellent. I'm going to sit by myself since he's on video, and thanks again for joining from London through his busy schedule, we're going to -- I'm going to have a couple of prepared questions. But we've got about 15 minutes. I want to enable you guys to ask a lot of questions. This is for you. I'm going to start, though, Chris, if you can just -- just tell us a little bit about Apollo and what excites you about the AV industry and then Aurora in particular.

Unknown Attendee

attendee
#92

4 Yes. I think is probably the biggest opportunity facing the intent it also onsite risk for us as an industry and as well. If you think about the new auto market, that's about half of if I continue the material like for other parts in place, you're talking about frequency of action accent will be as high as -- so the premium to that market is not that from 100 million to 50 million. Now that's the. But for us, test I don't want to progress on peak ICO. So I'd be worried to both guys why you into really deepen by the partnerships with companies like Aurora. And if I can capture a 50 million results [indiscernible] March but I'll be happy to me. So it's a huge opportunity for us. I have not to mention the benefits that come with autonomy, saving lives, getting goods and services to people in America and globally [indiscernible] kind of more affordable rate. There's low sole benefit. Yes, for us, as an insuring of a partnership where the insurance costs for those companies, specifically trucking, trucking a very hard insurance risk. And when you get those parties where they're really in where insurance is really valuable. That's a really great place for me to work.

David Maday

executive
#93

Excellent. Great. Now I know that -- it looks like from here, the reception is a little bit good as everybody -- I know we're going to be continuing to fine-tune it. So if we have some disruptions, we might go no video in just the audio. All right. Let's talk a little bit about from an underwriter's perspective, and you being the Chief Underwriter, how do you evaluate and differentiate risk across different autonomous technology stacks in the marketplace today.

Unknown Attendee

attendee
#94

Yes, sure. So we've been actually ensuring autonomous vehicles for over a decade. So we've built up quite a large states. We've also built a risk assessment framework for autonomy. So we look at why is the use case of the technology? Is it trucking? Is it robotaxis, is it autonomous roles. We'll have that as a key consideration then we'll look at the ODD, so where we're doing the operation themselves. A truck driving up the Arizona is very different to a robot to actually operate on the street to San Francisco. Then we'll start looking at the experience, which Again, autonomy has performed very, very well compared to the human drivers that we ensure. And so there's not a huge amount of developed claims data, but we're certainly building up that data set. And the final piece that we look at when we're trying to assess autonomy is all about culture. And it's super important. And if you asked me 5, 6, 7 years ago, and that may not have been part of our risk assessment framework, but it's so important about how we collect it how we're going to look at those expansion? What are we doing from a safety perspective? How are we partnering? How do we get very, very purposeful in how we want to position insurance because U.S. the U.S. legal system can be a very challenging one for insurance obstructive and trucking has had a lot of nucleonics. We want to make sure that if there is ever and a current or an access and involving an autonomous vehicle, but we are very well prepared for that. We know exactly how we're going to fund the technology in a potentially in front of major in a core North America.

David Maday

executive
#95

All right. Great. I'll ask one more question that's definitely top of mind. We talked a lot about cost structure for the trucking industry. Insurance is obviously a big cost item. When you look at the economics of underwriting autonomous trucks compared to traditional fleets, how do you see the pricing evolving over time as these platforms continue to scale?

Unknown Attendee

attendee
#96

Yes. I think we have into 2 key considerations, which will be frequency and severity. So if I deal with frequency, so the number of accidents, the number of collisions we already have enough developed data that we can really lean into that. And no, we're not at the 90% to 95% that certain mathematical reports have been released, but -- every year, we're seeing that frequency reduction, and we can lean in and price that in. The unknown buy is the severity because we have not seen a large number of claims involved in autonomous vehicles, hitting courtroom steps. So -- that is some of the uncertainty I would say if I'm ensuring a human driver, it's a very linear relationship to the risk. So if you do 10,000 miles in 1 year, my premium is x, -- if you do 20,000 miles, I'm pretty much going to charge you double because it's a lineation. It's not that for autonomy because every mile driven is slightly better than previously -- and so you're starting to see a different curve. And so with every mile driven, you're seeing the price of insurance lower. Now again, that is subject to the U.S. legal system, and we have seen some difficulties in human driving at the Montgomery Supremium cohort case. So for me, leaning into that regulation and legal side is where I'm spending a lot of my effort at the moment. But undoubtedly, in this space, rates for insurance are going down every year.

David Maday

executive
#97

That's excellent. All right. Well, why don't I instead me asking a whole bunch of questions. I'm sure you have a lot, and you usually ask me these questions. So I will ask somebody that knows more about it than I do. So let's just take some questions from the crowd.

Mike Latimore

analyst
#98

Mike Latimore, Northland Capital. I guess in terms of today's pricing, how do you -- what is the price of a virtual driver versus a human driver with similar frequency severity.

Unknown Attendee

attendee
#99

Yes. Good question. It differs -- I'll say it differs by state, but we're probably slightly above where a human driver is purely on that [indiscernible] That being said, I think that changes rapidly. And by quite a large amount, to be honest. So I think what we kind of see at the moment when I was talking about those rate decreases you're probably looking in the 15% to 25% range every year. And that doesn't take very long for that to compound to be a really significant factor.

David Maday

executive
#100

All right. Other questions?

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#101

[indiscernible] from Morgan Stanley. That was a very interesting point about you guys already preparing to defend the technology in court against any potential accident. Can you just unpack that a little bit more? You said you've been working with autonomy for over 10 years. When you go to like prior technologies, kind of what is that first precedent case look like? And kind of how obviously, there's no circumstances, but how easy does that get over time?

Unknown Attendee

attendee
#102

Great question. I think my concern is slightly alleviated, and we can thank our friends in the robo taxi space for this. I think Uber now making these partnerships we had an autonomy on the platform and having human driving on the platform has unlocked the defense for me in that scenario that I haven't been able to rely on before. So the way -- and please indulge me. What I would say now is if an autonomous vehicle go into an accident, I imagine a plaintiff audio that's looking for a big nuclear verdict can make big headlines would say something along the lines of if you put a dangerous vehicle on the road, and we need to publish you because you put our community risk, they scare people, and that's how it worked. And that really try to defend that. And what I mean by being proactive is working with the engineering and said, how would we defend the claim, how would we use a sense how we use the cameras at tenge to show what actually happened here and how we're trying to be the safest possible company in operation. What's brilliant now is because we will have a direct comparison, if that happens and they sue Uber, they'll say, well, my human driers go into [indiscernible] once every 50,000 miles, and the average severity of the entry is x. Now they can have a direct comparison to say, but the autonomous vehicles operating are 90% less likely to to get into Acton. And because of the braking speeds and the reaction times the severity is 50%. So I've actually connected you with a same perform transition, you can't come for me. My concern then for the rest of the market driving a you just sold me that the same as formal transportation was the AV for the money anyway. So I think the cost of human driving is just going to keep increasing. -- and the cost of autonomy will keep lowering. And then eventually, you get some inflection point you say it's just too expensive to allow humans to drive.

David Maday

executive
#103

And his best part was when it broke up a little bit, but I think you guys got the -- all right sorry, David.

David Vernon

analyst
#104

David Vernon, Bernstein. So as you think about the technology being in the cab and having all the information about causal liability being one source of being cheaper for autonomy versus the actual driver being safer -- like how do you think of what the technology brings to the table just in terms of being able to say, look, it wasn't the truck's fault or that was somebody else's fault? How do you like separate the benefit you get out of that from knowing how much safer the driver actually is?

Unknown Attendee

attendee
#105

Yes, yes. So it's that dampening severity point again. So I look at that as it's a great discovery tool. I just need to have a playbook, but I can use it in a call or where it's as impactful as it should be. There's lots of different jurisdictions, some jurisdictions may see you're confusing the jewelry, we it's inadmissible. So that's what we have to prepare that playbook. And where I love about the partnership with Helen heist team at Aurora, they're having those active conversations before anything -- now that's someone that has proven to me that they have a safety culture because you don't really talk about things like this unless it really means something and you see the importance. I do think what you touched on with the product itself is there's an argument to say that autonomy does has no place to sit in auto liability insurance. There is an argument to say it's a product liability risk, and that comes with a completely different framework for litigation and defense and pricing. So it's a really fascinating time that we're seeing companies like Aurora and partner insurers to say, we're going to create an insurance product. It's not just good for us, it's fit for our clients and all our stakeholders we work with.

David Maday

executive
#106

All right. time for a few more.

Ryan Sigdahl

analyst
#107

Ryan Sigdahl, Craig-Hallum. How do you think about underwriting different AV technology providers and the due diligence as you think about building that defense case, the safety case kind of everything -- and is there a differentiation between Aurora and others and maybe talk through that process and...

Unknown Attendee

attendee
#108

Yes, it's a great question. I think when I was talking about our risk assessment framework that culture pillar is really key, and that's kind of where I think your question is sitting -- we won't ensure anyone in autonomy unless we meet them in person have numerous conversations. It's quite a long process. There's not a 20, 50, 100 insurers queuing up to it autonomous vehicle risk, which I find staggering, but that's just me. We have those conversations and that fleshes out whether we have appetite. It is a true partnership, the way that we look at things, and there has to be a lot of transparency and willingness to share information both ways. So yes, I'm receiving information on the exposures that Aurora are operating in. But I'm also sending about trends, and I'm sending back how this our pricing model works to the rate. So they can see and balance those financials. And I do think financials will be so compelling to impart the future autonomy. You can -- for me, I find not straight away whether the company is going to be a good partner for us and when we are super selective in who are going to ensure.

David Maday

executive
#109

Okay. I think we have time for 1 more question.

Christopher Pierce

analyst
#110

Chris Pierce from Needham. I just want to tie together, you mentioned prices coming down for a year, but then you also mentioned you're surprised by the lack of competition in the space. As you get these miles, are you building in a more competitive space and more competitive bidding in that 15% to 20%? Or could we see it come down even more as there's more companies like yourselves that want to these draft miles?

Unknown Attendee

attendee
#111

Yes, I think it's a great question on further than that. Again, if the market is in and provide capacity I think what I hope for Apollo is obviously, we have long-term partnerships, and then there'll be an open conversation about what those rates do. We tend to have like a renewal retention on portfolio in the high 90s. I think it's really difficult one. If you ask me why more insurers jumping into this risk, it is because it's kind of cannibalizing a lot of their business. They have 50 years of developed loss data, why would they go into an industry and support an industry that's going to potentially completely disrupt the cash cow that they've had for a long time. I'm not in the personal line space. So it doesn't really affect me. So it's why I can lean in is a very exciting space and try to lead it. The capacity will come. You can't ignore the experience. And then -- and that's where I love about again, the data and the transparency. I'm not going to ensure someone for 10 years unless I show them how they perform and we have a very sensible discussion on what margin looks like for both parties.

Unknown Executive

executive
#112

And I would just add for that. So we treat insurance partners. We use the word partners a lot. They're just like every one of our other partners, whether they're on the customer panel, the OEMs or the Tier 1s. We're all partners together, we will not be successful if we try, especially early on, just bid out to the cheapest person. We really believe in select folks that believe in the technology. Apollo is a leader in this technology. They believe it. They have a substantial -- they carry a lot of insurance for us, and they will in the future. But of course, as new competition comes and it came to modes, but more than anything else, they're looking to actually increase their level of exposure into us. So I think it's a healthy relationship that we have.

David Maday

executive
#113

All right. Chris, I'm going to let you go. Thank you very much for the session and shed some light into insurance because you're a lot better at it than I am. Okay. We're almost to the end run, almost time to drive trucks, which is going to be way more exciting. But I got to tell you, this has been a great event. I haven't -- I'm so excited. The ability to not only tell our story and talk about this commercial inflection point, but also listen to so many of the people that are helping us get here and their excitement and this aligned vision is what keeps us all excited. But I know we're also excited about the financials, and you all want to hear about them. So we'll talk a little bit about our path to scale and economics and long-term value creation. And of course, our press release went out this morning. So a lot of you saw the punchline at the end, but we'll build you into it. Okay. It's important to start off again with the market opportunity, and we talked about this multiple times. The U.S. is a $1 trillion market based on 200 billion vehicle miles traveled. And this is a place where we can have an opportunity for unmatched value creation with autonomy. We really can't help influence this on a lot of levels. For us, the market has very attractive unit economics. And as Chris, Osa and a lot of the panel members talked about, it resonates. They can see the value in the technology. In the near term, our focus as you can see, is a $60 billion vehicle mile traveled market by 2028. For context, we're about $4 billion today. So we're going to be operating in a much bigger place. Even at a very reasonable single-digit percentage market share, that represents more than $1 billion of revenue opportunity for Aurora. So it's a great opportunity. So it's also important for us to remember what we've accomplished thus far. We always want to reflect on our road map. Are we delivering to the things that we said. You've heard multiple types right, that we are the only company operating in driveless on public roads today in trucking. We've surpassed 500,000 miles. And this isn't just like demos. These are commercial miles with all the commercial pains and challenges that trucking experiences today. We are fully allocated to exit 2026 with 200 driveless trucks, which would represent a $80 million revenue run rate on our Transportation as a Service fleet. And as a reminder, that's where we own and operate the trucks on behalf of our customers. And as [indiscernible] outlined, we're building the capacity with our upfit Center at Roche to achieve more than 1,000 trucks. So we're really on a good path. This is what we're delivering today. We really believe we're hitting this commercial inflection point at the end of this year. And it really is going to be the key to our growth trajectory in 2027 and beyond. -- right? For us, in 2027, DAS is our business model. That's our driver as a Service business well. That's the 1 that you heard a lot of earlier today. That's the 1 that the customers would like to own and operate the trucks and they like that because they can deliver real value. They can maximize the value of the transportation as a service -- or the drivers of a service business. By the end of 2027, we will have also launched our Inovio Hardware as a Service partnership. This is our asset-light DaaS framework. This is the one that allows us to build tens of thousands of trucks and this is where we believe we will surpass 30,000 trucks in 2030. Now to really understand the financial trajectory, let's just make sure we understand the 2 models. Our Transportation as a Service model is our customer adoption model. That's where we are today. We've talked about the ownership. We expect to get roughly 200,000 miles per truck on average per year. pricing is roughly $2 per mile, including fuel surcharge on average. It varies by lane, it varies by customer. This is a great customer adoption model, but it is also capital intensive and we are going to our driver as a Service asset-light business model. So we are going to limit this fleet to roughly 500 trucks. We then shift to our driver as a Service business model. That's where all the growth will occur. We also expect because the actual customers are owning and operating the trucks, they are able to maximize through their network optimization, the miles per truck, and we expect the actual miles per truck to increase closer to 250,000 miles per year. The revenue drops down from the $2 to $0.85 plus per mile, that's natural, right? As Osa pointed out in the cost comparison, now we're just focused on replacing the driver costs and not the overall cost. This still allows us to have high margin potential for the business. And so we're -- and we think it's a great strategy. We know that's what the customers want to have. And so that's what we've been building for the last several years. Now if I look out to the next 4 years, we project rapid top line revenue growth and margin expansion. Starting in 2027, we expect end the year at over 1,000 trucks -- that will represent roughly $200 million in revenue for the year. We also expect to achieve positive gross profit. Now our target to achieve positive gross profit on a run rate basis is in the first half of 2027. Now this target slightly moved from where we were at the -- where we were talking about the end of this year. And that's really just reflecting a slightly slower fleet ramp. All the revenue enablers and all the cost reduction enablers, including the labor and support scale efficiencies, delivering to customer end points and even really getting the full benefit of our hardware set are in place. So we're excited. We're on a path to achieve positive gross margin. If you look at 2028, we again believe that we will achieve positive free cash flow on a run rate basis in 2028. Now we expect to achieve this with roughly 7,500 trucks operating on the road. Then if you look into the future, and again, our targets going into the future, we really do expect rapid growth. We'll have the full benefit of everything that we put in our DaaS business model, our Aumivio partnership, being able to operate everywhere. And so we expect $5 billion of revenue, and we expect to exceed 60% gross margin really on our pathway to get to 70% gross margin. So with this rapid revenue expansion, we do expect that we would deliver compelling return on operating expenses and capital efficiency. And that's really important. We have spent a significant amount of money getting to this leadership position, putting ourselves in a position to be at this commercial inflection point. And we are going to continue to spend money to accelerate our lead and grow the top line revenue. So from an R&D perspective, we expect to continue R&D roughly where it's at today. I would say, adjusting for inflation, of course. But like we are going to continue to invest in our leadership position. If you look in the future, that means that an R&D dollar is generating $7 revenue in the future. And it's only going to get better, right? We really think this is going to get to, I think, 12% to 14% is really industry leading at that point. And so we're well on our path to get there. If you look at capital expenditures, for 2027, we expect to spend about $185 million. This number is largely comprised of 2 factors. Number one, building out the rest of our transportation as a service fleet, so buying more trucks and getting them on the road. And the second thing is buying the remainder of the second-generation hardware kits that we're going to put on the road before we go to the Aumivio business model. If you look at 2028, we expect our capital expenditures to drop to below $50 million. And on a go-forward basis, CapEx as a percentage of revenue is going to be less than 1%. -- we will be fully in our driver as a Service business model. Okay? And then the last thing is SG&A. We are going to increase spending to achieve the commercial growth that we're targeting. It's -- we're establishing a target of roughly 7% SG&A as a percent of revenue out in 2030, and we'll continue to monitor that each and every year. This is really set up so that we can scale the business long term, 30,000 trucks, there's a lot of trucks. You need a lot of support to be able to do that. All right. So let's close it out where Chris began, right? We are extremely excited about the industrialization of the or driver, right? If you look at 2030, we expect to be operating in a $150 billion VMT market. Remember, the total market is about 200. We expect to be operating almost everywhere. We're going to deliver more than $5 billion in revenue, more than 30,000 trucks, exceeding 60% gross margin and having high return on our R&D spend. And this is just the U.S. trucking market, right? We're going to be able to take opportunities to go to global markets and additional adjacent applications. And so this is just the beginning for us. So this is a compelling business just for the U.S. Honestly, Aurora is driving the commercial inflection point in autonomous freight today. okay? And we are exceptionally well positioned to maintain our leadership position. I can say that. I know you asked others what they thought. We really truly feel we are in a leadership position. We're taking advantage of all the investments we've made, and we're really at that commercial inflection point. We also believe that we're well positioned to generate tremendous long-term shareholder value for our investors. So with that, I'll ask Chris to come back on stage and bring us home.

Christopher Urmson

executive
#114

Thank you, Dave. If you talk to Dave for the next few years are going to be tremendous. You've talked to OSA the next few years is going to be fun. If you talk to me they're going to be exciting. One thing is clear, the pieces are plain place, right? We are on the road operating day in, day out commercially drive lessly for our customers. And the thing to remember is trucking in the U.S. is only the beginning. Right? You can count on the fact that we're going to take the show on the road and go and deploy this to global markets and expand in that direction. But it's also important to remember that the foundational investments we've made in building safety-critical verifiable sets us up to go and take on other exciting commercial applications. If you think about wherever a vehicle needs to be guided to operate safely through the world, that's a place where you're going to find Aurora. Transforming trucking is really just the first step in delivering the benefit of self-driving technology safely, quickly and broadly. With that, I want to say thank you again for spending your valuable time with us today. I'm going to welcome the executive team up on the stage here, so we can answer the questions you haven't got to ask yet today. So maybe you guys want to join us up here? I don't know why I'm clapping.

Unknown Attendee

attendee
#115

Because you're so damn excited.

Christopher Urmson

executive
#116

I'm so excited. It's going to be fun and tremendous.

Ravi Shanker

analyst
#117

Ravi Shanker, Morgan Stanley. Maybe 1 for David, 1 for Chris. David, can you give us some level of detail on how you got to the 30,000 target number? And if top down, bottom up, et cetera. And Chris, I like your -- and 1 more thing video at the very end in other end markets -- when do you start thinking about those? When do we start talking about those.

David Maday

executive
#118

Okay. It's a little bit of both, right? So we have a top-down vision of where we expect to go to and that's largely based on macroeconomic factors, like 30,000 trucks does sounds like a lot to some people. But when you look at the market, there's over 2 million trucks operating on the roads today. They build over 250,000 trucks every year. So I know it seems like a lot, and it will be -- there's a lot of research out there that says the trucking market -- autonomous trucking market is going to be 10% of the market. So there's a little bit of that. But we always have to balance that with our plans. So we look at both the supply side, what do we have relative to our hardware set working with the Movio team, working with our OEM partner where are we going to build? How much can we build? What do we think is the desired and reasonable capacity each year. And we balance that with OSA and the business development side to understand where do we think the customers are going and again, we look at it from a VMT perspective as well. So if you think about a $150 billion BMT that you can operate in, 30,000 trucks and you do the math, it's like it's not that much of share gain. So I think we're appropriately conservative in some ways, but we want to also put a vision out there that like this is -- we really are at the inflection point some of the biggest challenges we've faced in the past is, is the technology going to be there? Will customers be ready? Can we ensure it? Can we build it -- I mean all those things have been answered -- and now we just are going to go and execute it and deliver the value. That doesn't mean that there is not a ton of hard work that has to be done. But the doubt about whether it could happen I think, has been erased. And so now it's about taking advantage and getting to that true commercial inflection.

Christopher Urmson

executive
#119

Yes. It's going to be a lot of fun. It's exciting tremendous. And on the other domains. So first of all, as David has made the case, if all we do is deliver the market leader in trucking, I'm going to be pretty damn satisfied. And I think for everyone here, we'll make a hell of a lot of money for you and your clients, and we'd be proud to do that. At the same time, we're ambitious. And we have a lead, and we have a capability that no 1 else can replicate right now. And so we are starting in a very lightweight way to assess where is the right opportunity to go and apply this technology yet. This is not taking our eye off the ball on the core business because we have to really get that established and build it and shame on me and shame on us if we let that slip. So there's no effort to take the foot off the gas in any way in that space. But we are starting to think, okay, the Gen 3 hardware is in validation at this point. Right? Where do we want to go apply next, where are the markets? What are the opportunities? And so we're starting to think about it. You'll start to see more over the next couple of years from my expectation.

Ryan Sigdahl

analyst
#120

Ryan Sigdahl, Craig-Hallum. Dave, maybe first gross margin 60% in 2030 previously at 70% in 2028, maybe talk through the puts and takes on the change there. And then, Chris, just on the last point, are those all AI creations? Or is any of that actually products that we're showing editions at.

Unknown Executive

executive
#121

The today is AI creation.

David Maday

executive
#122

Yes. Yes. I think when we did it 2 years ago, I think our target is still to get to about 70%. I think we're going to be above 60%. We put a little bit of a hedge in there in terms of that, just understanding kind of the business a little bit stronger than did before, right? I would say though that it's probably reasonably conservative as well. And I thought it was appropriate to say it at that, Mark. There is no reason we can't deliver outstanding gross margins and reach 70%. But there are some uncertainties out there of things that we have to do. And frankly, there's a -- there's been a lot of supply chain headwinds as well that we're accounting for and addressing. So it's just appropriately conservative, I think, at this point. It's also -- by the way, somebody asked to and at 60% at $5 billion our free cash flow looks awesome or tremendous, I guess.

Mark Delaney

analyst
#123

Mark Delaney with Goldman. Well, first, in terms of the exciting and fun. I'm very interested and excited to do the actually on-road demos this afternoon and remembering a couple of years ago, your last Investor Day was on your closed course is -- so really exciting to see the progress and actually get to participate in that. So thanks to all of you for allowing us to do that later. A quick question for Dave, on the financials. Maybe talk a little bit more on the '27 [indiscernible] you're starting to lay out. So you talked about exiting this year, 200 trucks over 1,000. Should we think about kind of the back half weighted '27 when Aumivio comes on or more linear -- and in terms of some of the CapEx numbers you shared, are those numbers that you think maybe you can offset if you find financing and partnership options? Or is that a pretty firm expectation at this point around cash out from Aurora next year?

Christopher Urmson

executive
#124

Two really good questions. I think on the first, it will be a little bit more linear next year. We really have the installed capacity in place to build 1,000 trucks, so 20 per week. So I think this year, it was really about getting to that capacity, and that's why it was back-end loaded. We're just going to build upon that over time. So I think the numbers are going to consistently get higher but it's going to be more of a linear trend than back weighted. So -- and with regard to the CapEx, you're exactly right. We did identify it as CapEx. We have looked at the cost of equity, the cost of capital. We've looked at various financing options. Right now, I think I'm leaning more towards just purchasing them and calling on CapEx. But -- that doesn't mean we aren't evaluating other options as well. It's just -- I think that is probably the more likely option at this point in time.

George Gianarikas

analyst
#125

George Gianarikas here from Canaccord. Just a couple of caring questions for Dave. And I'm sorry, I missed some of this stuff, but I just found out my water heater brooks, so I'm a little bit of the runoff. So maybe on 2027 guidance you mentioned you'll be exiting with 1,000 trucks. I'm assuming that's both DaaS and TaaS. And you capped TaaS, I think at 500 and Volvo just told us there will be a 300. So I'm assuming that's an inclusive number that may include other OEM trucks as well. Is that an accurate?

Christopher Urmson

executive
#126

So we're going to be greater than 1,000. We'll give like -- and this is our target, we'll give you your guidance like we would normally do after a after the Q4 earnings. But yes, we'll be over 1,000 trucks. It's a combination of our international upfit, which can be both TaaS and DaaS as well as it will be Volvo. And in Volvo's case, we would consider them more DaaS because they're owning and operating it. We're not doing the 1 and operating. So anything that was in Volvo, we would probably consider under the DaaS we will definitely have more DaaS trucks operating than task trucks by the end of next year, or at least that's our expectation.

George Gianarikas

analyst
#127

Just a couple of more clarifying, I'm sorry. So.

Christopher Urmson

executive
#128

That's why we're here.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#129

The 4%, I think SG&A guidance long term.

Christopher Urmson

executive
#130

Okay, good. And the 7x and then the R&D efficient, what does that SP-70 Help us transit. Yes. So for every R&D dollar, we're going to be generating at least $7 in revenue. And then like we've done some benchmarking, and some of the very best are at about 12. And so a lot of people talk about our R&D investments and what we're making. We firmly believe this is what separates us from everybody else. Like everybody talks about doing a tech stack and the things. But like there's a lot to this building that amazing architecture back building our Ara services platform to make sure we operate -- we want to continue to invest in that. And so the way we look at it is, everybody says, yes, it's really high today versus the revenue -- and for short years, regenerating $7 per every R&D dollar. And beyond that, we're going to be achieving $12, $14 per every R&D dollar and that is actually some of the benchmarking that some of the industry leaders.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#131

Okay. And then last clarifying point the 2030 guidance, it implies at least a run rate, I think, of close to $7 billion miles and your revenue guidance is for $5 billion. I know these are sort of approximations, but that's about $0.75. Is there room for upside to that because you talked about 80.

Christopher Urmson

executive
#132

There's a little bit of upside.

Andres Sheppard-Slinger

analyst
#133

[indiscernible] from Cantor Fitzgerald again. First of all, once again, congratulations on all the great accomplishments and successes I guess first clarifying question is, Dave, can we say we're now in the walking phase. We've gone from a grain or a light do kind of where we are.

David Vernon

analyst
#134

And I think we're in the tremendous phase.

Christopher Urmson

executive
#135

We've certainly stretched and we're starting to do, I think.

Andres Sheppard-Slinger

analyst
#136

I guess my other 2 quick questions are. The first is I wonder if you can maybe expand on what are some other use cases and verticals, perhaps industries that we haven't talked about today that you could see this being a great solution for, whether it's military defense, whether it's international markets, Curious to get your take there? And then maybe the second part of the question, I was just wondering if you could maybe give us an update on your relationship or partnership with Uber -- there's been some conversations there. So just curious if you could maybe give us their perspective.

Christopher Urmson

executive
#137

Yes. So certainly, first, let's talk international and the markets. When we look at it kind of globally, the U.S. is clearly outside of China, the largest possible market. And so we want to make sure we win here. China, we think it's basically off limits for as far out as I can imagine. -- next places like Japan and Korea are particularly interesting because the cost of labor is high. And with the population dynamics, the need and the amount of logistics they are freight logistics have the move by truck is large, and so we seem like very interesting markets. They're also long lead term or long lead time markets there's a lot of engagement. You have to have partners. The good news is in both of those countries, we have relationships with long-standing relationships, whether it's with Toyota or Honda, they may ultimately be helpful in building entry there. The Gulf region is also interesting, right? They want to be technology leading. They have a large nonemergent workforce. The challenge there is 1 of labor cost. And so as a capital allocator, do I want to put a truck on the road in the U.S. where I can generate this much revenue? Or do I put it on the road in in Saudi or somewhere where I can generate a fraction of that. And so we have conversations globally about what are the incentives and how would you align interest so that, that becomes something that meets their objectives and meets our economic is for deploying the technology. So those are kind of globally adjacent markets, there's clearly opportunities in nearby logistics. So moving from Class 8 to Class Class 7 trucks. Glad that worked going to be a legend. We see that as just a very clear obvious next step. Robotaxi is interesting, but it's a much different, I think, harder business. There's a lot more capital investment that you have to make to scale and we really like the idea of working with partners who have those capital and have already made that investment, and we can leverage it. So we'll continue to pay attention to Robotech, you figure out when the right entry point is there. Off-highway, mining, ultra trucks. That's another place where there's already significant capital that's been invested. We can help those companies accelerate and improve their economics. So -- but like I said, what we have built is a competence to deliver safe to critical physical AI systems. And so anywhere something drives where something moves, we can go help with that. we just need to be disciplined in when we start to invest in that. On the Uber relationship, Uber is great, right? Daragh was a Board member, continue to have a tight relationship with him. They have a business objective that they've been clear about, which is creating competition in the AV robotaxi space. And they've been clear for some time about the need to take capital and recirculate it from us into funding that kind of a defensive measure for their business. So we've seen this coming. I actually think it's a great thing. Right? This was a large concentrated position from a holder that had no intent to hold it long term. And so it's been an overhang in the stock. And so the fact that, that those shares have recirculated to folks who we expect will want to hold for the long term. I think is a really good thing for our shareholders. And so I'm actually pretty excited about it.

Itay Michaeli

analyst
#138

Itay Michaeli from TD Cowen over here. Just 2 questions. Chris, you mentioned opening lanes going from 6 weeks to 6 days. I'm curious kind of when you think you can hit that? What the significance is maybe for costs when you get there? And then how transferable is that rate of change to markets. And then 1 for Dave, just on the 60% gross margins, is that all assumed to be on the third-generation hardware and kind of fourth generation down the road present some upside to that?

Christopher Urmson

executive
#139

Do you want to go first? Yes. So I'll talk first about the lane pension. So this has been our expectation, right? This has been our thesis this as we continue to improve the generalization, there's fewer new things to learn. So you were a driver obviously more rapidly deploy -- we don't believe in like this 1 shot, Yallo and hope kind of strategy. We actually want to know when we put it there. It wouldn't just get lucky today that every time it's on that route, it's going to be safe. And so there's an investment we make in verifying and validating this for these new lines. That's something that didn't matter initially, but we have been accelerating that work. And I think it's less about cost more about flexibility and the ability to go and be adaptive and responsive to customer need. And so when a customer comes to us and says, "I really want to operate between 2 places that currently aren't in our network. It goes from, okay, we need to plan ahead to allowing our sales team to say, "Yes, we'll be there next week, right? And that flexibility and ultimately, the compounding and network effects that will come from this interconnected network of routes will really, again, kind of compound into the value that we provide to customers expectation. And relative to the $60 million to $70 million. So the short answer is, yes, I still think there are a lot of ways that we will get to 70%. I still think that is going to be our target. -- if we work with our Inovio partners in Jeremy back there, like we're already talking about, all right, what changes would we make on the hardware that really productive as well as more cost effective. I think there's a lot of things also like 4 years from now, the cost of the human driver is going to be substantially more is today. I think the cost of ensuring AV trucks is going to be substantially lower for our customers. And I think that's going to create more value. So I think there's a ton of opportunities there. We certainly believe that 70% is a target, and it might just take a year longer to get there. I think we have time for quick questions. We've got them right here.

Mike Latimore

analyst
#140

Mike Latimore, Northland Capital. So on the economics you showed -- is it materially different between long haul and say, more regional use case I think about your mix, what do you think about the mix of kind of customers doing long more recently use cases that.

Unknown Executive

executive
#141

Yes. Long haul has definitely been the most popular thesis that people come to us on. But as you heard from Matt, the short haul use case is tremendous and sees value near instantaneous. And so we have customers in both camps that are growing very quickly. I'd say the growth in each segment now that they're better understood is equal, but we just have a much larger pipeline on the long haul.

Christopher Urmson

executive
#142

And in terms of improving the economics, our cost base is for serving them. I don't think there's a material difference to us, whether it's short haul or long haul, we really think about it as amortize on a per mile basis. And so yes, not particularly.

Ken Hoexter

analyst
#143

Kenneth Hoexter from BofA. And the rides a little later on. Maybe just talk a little bit about lane expansion, you've talked about the speed you can do it moving north going into -- I mean we haven't really hit on weather and different kind of lanes and your expansion speed and where you want to target and maybe throw in also regulation inter -- as you do that, are you now free to go everywhere?

Christopher Urmson

executive
#144

Yes. So we're -- 1 question turns into like 5. That was well played. So well played. So yes, I just got a Okay. It's all good. So on the land expansion side, yes, from a build the map of verified validate it doesn't really matter whether in Texas or Arkansas or in Minnesota, right? So that -- the competence for building those maps. That's not it. and verifying validating them doesn't really matter across them. On the dimension of weather, today, we're operating in a variety of weather conditions, including good rate -- we'll continue to push that. It's really incremental work. By the end of this year, we expect to be operating in light snow. When we start to move to snow, this is 1 of the things that, by the way, about 15 years ago, I created a bugaboo about snow and like I wish I could go back and reset that conversation. But if you think about what does snow mean, there's kind of 3 ways that affects the road drivers. So 1 is there's stuff in the air, which makes it harder to see -- in certain conditions, the ground can have a lower friction, which means it's hard to control the vehicle, at least you have to be less dynamic. And the third is that the world looks different. The first of those, we already have them, right? We drive through dust, we drive through rate. We need to do the work to make sure there's nothing surprising. But this is not really a thing that we worry about. The low friction part of this, again, this is an incremental step of validation, where we just want to go -- we'll go through and check that the control system doesn't do anything goofy when you get to a particularly low degree of traction on the road and then make sure that we have encoded the behavior so that we can respond when we identify those things. And then when the world looks a little bit different, again, this is something that's just incremental work. It's not a big deal. The last part of the question was around regulation. And as Osi anecdote led into, like we're seeing an incredible amount of progress on that front. More action federal level than we've seen -- than I've seen in, I don't know, 20 years of working this. So that's exciting to see. We're also seeing a lot of enthusiasm from the states we operate into. It's going to be a while where we continue to operate with 50 different regulatory regimes, even with the enthusiasm we see for build 250 which is the the legislation basically the Surface Reauthorization Act, which is putting in place a framework for regulation for our vehicles. That's going to take a while to come into action. But we have a team that has put a lot of effort into building relationships and trust with the federal and state regulators. And so we feel very comfortable at our ability to unlock kind of key economic elements of expansion across the U.S. It will take effort, but we feel good about it. I took too long with that last question. I [indiscernible] Ken. So with that, thank you all. I know this was a big commitment of time. Hopefully, you found it useful. Hopefully, you come away with the enthusiasm and energy and excitement that we have from this. For those of you here in Dallas, I am psych to go get you in a driverless truck operating on the freeway here. It is something does not get bored or to get boring. So glad to have you with us. Glad to have you come do that. With that, let's roll. Thank you.

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