Continental and Aurora Partner to Realize Commercially Scalable Autonomous Trucking Systems

Continental and Aurora Innovation, Inc. have entered into an exclusive partnership to deliver the first commercially scalable generation of Aurora’s flagship integrated hardware and software system, the Aurora Driver.

The organizations will jointly design, develop, validate, deliver, and service the scalable autonomous system for the trucking industry. The system is expected to be available for carriers and commercial fleet operators across the U.S. and to help reduce costs to facilitate broader adoption.

“Continental and Aurora will bring the commercial freight market, limited by supply chain constraints in many markets of the world, to a new service level. The first commercially scalable autonomous trucking system provides exciting opportunities for passenger transportation in the coming years and paves the way for broad adoption of autonomous mobility.”

Ismail Dagli

Head of Autonomous Mobility Business Area

Increased safety, reduced fuel consumption and quicker delivery times

Given the continued strain on the global supply chain, autonomous trucking solutions have the potential to help meet today’s growing demand and ease the strain currently experienced worldwide.

Autonomously powered trucks have the ability to operate around the clock opening up the possibility for cargo between Dallas and Los Angeles (comparable to Berlin to Madrid) to be delivered within less than 24 hours.

As a result, fuel consumption can potentially be reduced by around ten percent, while the delivery time can be shortened up to three times compared to that of a human driver. With more than 1.35 million annual global deaths on roadways according to the World Health Organization, autonomous vehicles represent an opportunity to transform travel safety for millions of individuals and the transportation of millions of goods.

Through this joint work, Continental and Aurora are committed to improving safety, delivering scalable and predictable driving capacities via the Aurora Driver, as well as enhancing efficiency with higher utilization.

Industry's first hardware-as-a-service business model

Continental and Aurora have agreed upon a hardware-as-a-service business relationship, based on mileage driven, to deliver safe, reliable, uptime-optimized and commercially scalable autonomous driving systems to customers through the Aurora Horizon platform. Aurora Horizon was developed to offer a safer, more reliable, predictable, and cost-efficient driver service to supplement human driver supply.

Using this service, carriers and fleet operators will be able to better utilize the potential of their vehicle fleets, scale business on demand and help address today’s driver shortage.

Continental and Aurora plan to provide this scalable solution to Aurora's vehicle manufacturing partners. Continental parts are expected to be produced and assembled in its newly built manufacturing facility in New Braunfels, Texas, as well as others across the company’s global footprint.

Autonomous trucking system – the implementation

In this first-of-its-kind partnership, Continental will be responsible for the autonomous driving system kits which will leverage a wide spectrum of Continental’s extensive automotive product portfolio from sensors, automated driving control units (ADCU), high performance computers (HPC), telematics units, and more, to the complete fallback system which covers the full chain of effects.

Continental will integrate these hardware components into pods which will be supplied to Aurora’s vehicle manufacturing partners. This will advance the product offering for autonomous trucking customers.

Autonomous Trucking System - The Implementation

World’s first serviceable automotive-grade autonomous system at scale

Aurora Truck in front of Continental New Braunfels building

Introducing new hardware to the market is complex and time-intensive, often taking years from initial design to the start of production. Recognizing this challenge early on, Aurora teamed up with Continental to jointly develop reliable, serviceable, cost-efficient autonomous hardware for mass production. 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.

The Path to the Start of Production in 2027

Continental and Aurora are also sharing their four-year partnership roadmap to commercialize thousands of autonomous trucks:

2023 – Blueprint and Design:

Aurora and Continental align on the detailed system architecture, key requirements, and detailed technical specifications of the Aurora Driver hardware and new high-performance fallback system. This phase is complete.

2024-2025 – Build and Test:

With the system architecture in hand, Continental will build initial versions of the hardware for testing at its new facility in New Braunfels, Texas, USA, and across its global manufacturing footprint.

2026-2027 – Finalization, Start of Production, and Integration:

Continental will industrialize and validate the future Aurora Driver hardware and fallback system before the Start of Production at its facilities. The hardware will leverage a wide spectrum of Continental’s extensive automotive product portfolio from sensors, automated driving control units (ADCU), high-performance computers (HPC), telematics units, and more. The hardware and fallback system will be shipped to Aurora’s trucking manufacturing partners for integration into autonomous-ready vehicles. During this phase, the companies will also develop a service playbook and maintenance network for Aurora’s customers.

2027 and beyond – Deployment at Scale:

Thousands of trucks integrated with the Aurora Driver are ready to autonomously haul freight across the U.S.