Aurora’s Road to Driverless Freight (with Sterling Anderson)

The AV trucking company Aurora is spending the final days of 2024 busily getting ready to start hauling freight without humans on board, a long-awaited milestone. On the eve of this potentially historic launch, our host Timothy B. Lee catches up with co-founder Sterling Anderson about the long road of technological innovation that led here.

• Sterling shares his journey from leading Autopilot at Tesla to starting Aurora in late 2016.
• The conversation covers the technical and strategic decisions behind Aurora's development, emphasizing their shift from robotaxis to autonomous trucking.
• Sterling highlights key partnerships with OEMs and others that have allowed Aurora scale their operations efficiently.
• Tim and Sterling discuss Aurora's unique approach of verifiable AI to ensure safety and reliability compared to end-to-end monolithic systems.
• Finally, Sterling explains the critical regulatory aspects Aurora is navigating as they aim for a driverless trucking launch between Dallas and Houston by April 2025.