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

One of our components that will play a role in our partnership with Aurora: the Long-Range Radar

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.

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

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.