Aurora’s autonomous trucks are now driving at night. Its next big challenge is rain.

For the next year, Aurora’s Innovation CEO Chris Urmons wants to “unlock” Sunbelt to the United States, a southern route where its self-driving trucks will carry products for companies like Uber Freight and Hirsbach Motor Line.

Aurora, which has turned it on Driver This spring has already made some progress in that goal. The company said in a second quarterly letter to shareholders on Wednesday that Dallas and Houston had three commercially operated self-driving trucks and logged in lately 20,000 driverless miles in late June. According to the company, a cab of its commercial self-driving trucks contains a human “observer” who are not there for management or intervention.

Aurora also opened a terminal in Phoenix, another physical sign of her sunbelt tracking route mission. Aurora is running autonomous tracking on the 15 -hour route for Phoenix, Hirsbach and Warner for customers from Fort Worth Terminal in Texas. The exit of the company’s terminals, located within one to five miles from the highway, requires driverless trucks to manage the surface roads.

However, it is the power of the night -operated company that helps to push it into a new region. Aurora said on Wednesday that it has legalized the power to navigate the highways and roads for its driverless trucks. It allows the trucks to travel a long distance – and is importantly past the traditional man -made human drivers federally past the constraints of compulsory services. Truck drivers are allowed to drive up to 11 hours during 14 hours of time; And they can’t do day after day. Truck drivers also need to take 10 hours break after completing the long distance route.

In a recent interview, Urmons told TechCrunch, “The value is truly on a long length – so 600 miles of course is a good range, where it is possible for humans,” Urmon told Techcunch in a recent interview that he finally hopes that Arara trucks are carrying from Miam to California to California.

Urmons partially owns Arora, the long -range Leader credit, which can detect objects more than 450 meters in the dark, for its skill at night. According to the company, the leader can detect pedestrians, vehicles and debris up to 11-seconds than the Traditional Daily Driver. Aurora has achieved two leaders since its inception in 2017. The company bought BlackmoreA Leader based in Montana, in May 2019 and our technology in 2021.

Now, the rest of the engineers of Urorason and Arora are working to legalize the skills of driverless trucks for the rain.

“By the end of the year, we hope to be operating the day, night and rain – if you can’t drive through the rain, in the end, it is hard to support these long activities because it is raining somewhere,” he said.

Today, Aurora’s development fleet works in the rain and that Urmons mentions enough that most of them will be surprised why the company is not allowing its commercial trucks to do the same. Aurora did not end the validity of it today, and “So we refused to keep that check mark on his side and let it go there,” he mentioned.

Today, the company observes the weather on a commercial route between Dallas and Houston. If the situation of adverse weather like a sudden rain is raised, these trucks are able to identify it and pull themselves out of the road where they will wait to rescue, Urmons said.

“This year can truly drive the vehicles to make the capacity toolsbox,” he said with the agency’s focus on the validity of driving at night and in the rain.

Next year, Aurora will focus on the distance and its road network scaling from its fleet. Aurora plans to operate “decades of driverless trucks” on public roads at the end of the year, and there are “hundreds” at the end of the 2026.

Driverless trucks will be criticized if the Aurora ever expects to reach profitability, including more routes from the night and rain to work in the rain and a larger fleet.

Today the net income gap from revenue is a bigger. Aurora has reported $ 1 million in the second quarter and damage to net income $ 201m dollars, According to the regulatory filingThe