The partnership gives Aurora a path to deploy autonomous trucks at scale to deliver customer value for one million miles.
Continental and Aurora Innovation announced that they have achieved a key development milestone to commercialize autonomous trucks at scale. The companies have finalized the design and architecture of the future fallback system and hardware of the Aurora Driver – an SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) Level 4 autonomous driving system – that Continental plans to start production of in 2027. The finalized hardware design comes less than a year after the companies entered an industry-first partnership aimed at high-volume manufacturing of autonomous trucking systems.
Philipp von Hirschheydt, Executive Board member for the Automotive Group sector at Continental, said, “Technologies for autonomous mobility present the biggest opportunity to transform driving behavior since the creation of the automobile. Achieving this milestone puts us on a credible path to deploy easy-to-service autonomous trucking systems that customers demand.”
“Entering an exclusive partnership with Aurora was a very good decision as it is an ideal match. Being the industry’s only tier-one supplier with a commitment to industrialize autonomous hardware kits at scale allows us to be at the forefront of and capitalize on this groundbreaking technology,” von Hirschheydt added.
Chris Urmson, Co-Founder and CEO at Aurora, said, “From day one, we knew we’d need to build a strong ecosystem of partners to bring this technology to market safely and at a commercial scale. Finalizing the design of our future hardware is a meaningful step toward making the unit economics of the Aurora Driver compelling and building a business for the long-term.”
The partnership gives Aurora a path to deploy autonomous trucks at scale after its initial driverless launch, planned at the end of 2024. With Continental’s automotive development and manufacturing expertise, the future Aurora Driver will be designed to deliver customer value for one million miles.
