Autonomous Trucks Are Here, but When Will They Scale?

Kodiak showcases its autonomous driving system installed on a Peterbilt tractor at ACT Expo 2026. (Seth Clevenger/Transport Topics)

LAS VEGAS — Autonomous trucking is shifting from early pilot programs toward full-scale commercial launches generally targeted for this year or next. But how quickly might driverless trucks spread across the nation’s highways once the technology becomes more widely available?

Leaders from five of the most prominent developers of autonomous driving technology for commercial vehicles shared their views on that question during a May 5 panel discussion at ACT Expo 2026.

Ossa Fisher, president of Aurora Innovation, said all the technical barriers to deploying autonomous trucks have been overcome.

“It is no longer a question of if. It is no longer question of when. It is really a question of how quickly and how broadly we scale to become the autonomous backbone of American transportation,” she said.

Raquel Urtasun, founder and CEO of Waabi, said the bottleneck in the “early innings” of commercial deployment will not be interest on the part of fleet operators, but the initial supply of trucks equipped for autonomous driving.

“The limiting factor right now is not customer adoption,” she said. “It’s really building those trucks at scale.”

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From left, PlusAI’s David Liu, Kodiak’s Don Burnette, Torc’s Peter Vaughan Schmidt, Aurora’s Ossa Fisher and Waabi’s Raquel Urtasun discuss the commercial rollout of autonomous trucks at ACT Expo 2026. (Seth Clevenger/Transport Topics)

Autonomous trucking is transitioning from a development phase to a commercialization phase, said David Liu, founder and CEO of PlusAI.

“Driverless trucks are going to be on the road in the very, very near future,” he said. “A few years ago, people were questioning that statement. But nowadays, most people do see that coming in the very near future. The question is, how quickly can we scale up this autonomous trucking industry?”

Today, developers such as PlusAI are working in partnership with truck manufacturers and fleet customers in real freight operations to pave the way for broader deployment.

Peter Vaughan Schmidt, CEO of Torc Robotics, agreed that the main hurdles for autonomous truck developers have shifted. In the past, it was simply proving the technology works, he said. Today, it’s proving to customers that it seamlessly fits into their operations and provides benefits to them.

From autonomous trucks to alternative fuels, there’s a wide range of commercial vehicle technologies on the show floor at @ACTExpo 2026. Here are a few highlights. #ACTExpo pic.twitter.com/wEisl21cIZ — Seth Clevenger (@SethClevenger) May 5, 2026

Once deployed, the success of autonomous trucks will hinge on familiar key performance indicators, starting with the cost of operating and maintaining the vehicles and overall freight efficiency.

“Then it’s the basic laws of trucking,” Schmidt said. “The KPIs that you have on a truck, on a driver today are the same KPIs you have in the future on an autonomous Cascadia.”

Rather than requiring fleets to redesign their transportation networks, autonomous trucks should operate within their existing freight flows and haul loads directly from customer locations to their destinations, Waabi’s Urtasun said. “You need to meet them where they are at.”

PlusAI’s Liu predicted that driverless trucks, once commercially deployed, can scale up quickly as they improve safety and freight efficiency while also easing the industry’s driver recruiting and retention challenges.

“I believe that the scaling factor of the autonomous trucking industry is going to be tremendous,” he said, suggesting that tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of driverless trucks could be on the road in the coming 25 years.

Expanding Deployment

Aurora, which has partnered with major for-hire carriers such as FedEx, Schneider and Werner Enterprises, has been actively ramping up its autonomous truck deployments and expanding to new lanes.

“While last year was about proving the technology, this year is about scaling,” Fisher said. “We’ll be ending the year with hundreds of trucks on the road. We’ve already found commercial commitments for those trucks.”

During ACT Expo, Aurora announced it recently began hauling freight autonomously in Texas for foodservice distributor McLane Co., building on a pilot program that began in 2023.

In another development, Aurora expanded its autonomous freight network to a new route connecting Dallas and Oklahoma City in conjunction with Volvo Autonomous Solutions. VAS operates purpose-built autonomous trucks outfitted with virtual driver technology from both Aurora and Waabi.

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Volvo Autonomous Solutions exhibits a self-driving truck equipped with the Aurora Driver at ACT Expo 2026. (Seth Clevenger/Transport Topics)

Aurora also recently expanded its partnership with Hirschbach Motor Lines, which plans to purchase 500 trucks powered by the Aurora Driver with delivery beginning in 2027.

Don Burnette, founder and CEO of Kodiak, said end users generally don’t care about having the fanciest artificial intelligence capabilities. They care about how the trucks perform day in and day out.

“Ultimately, it’s usability that will determine which systems people choose,” he said.

For now, with few exceptions, autonomous truck developers continue to operate on public roads with safety drivers or observers in the cab, but proving the value of autonomy will require going fully driverless, Burnette said.

“You don’t really learn the true lessons in the market until you pull that driver out — until you don’t have anybody to fall back on — especially if you put this in the hands of a customer who’s actually paying you and they have a real business that they need to run,” he said.

In Q3 we integrated the Kodiak Driver into four more customer-owned trucks for operations in the Permian Basin. Leading to 10 fully driverless trucks equipped with the Kodiak Driver running day and night for Atlas Energy Solutions. pic.twitter.com/rS7R5U6wsg — Kodiak AI (@KodiakRobotics) November 18, 2025

For the past 18 months, Kodiak customer Atlas Energy Solutions has been operating 20 unmanned trucks on private roads in the Permian Basin. Kodiak plans to expand across other industrial businesses such as logging and mining and aims to begin driver-out highway driving by the end of this year, Burnette said.

Since April, Kodiak has been using its self-driving trucks to haul freight in Texas for truckload carrier Roehl Transport.

Torc, which is preparing for its commercial launch next year, recently expanded its autonomous truck testing to public roads in Michigan.

The full commercialization of autonomous trucks will be an “epic moment and technology shift that will transform an industry to be safer and more efficient,” Schmidt said. “Now it’s all about writing history.”