Aurora targets 30,000 trucks by 2030 via asset-light option

The Aurora Driver has safely completed more than 500,000 driverless miles since commercial launch. (Aurora)

Aurora Innovation expects 30,000 trucks equipped with its Aurora Driver platform to be on the road in North America in 2030, with the vast majority utilizing a soon-to-be-available self-driving truck configuration intended to transform Aurora’s finances.

Pittsburgh-based Aurora will launch a hardware-as-a-service model in partnership with Aumovio by the end of 2027, Chief Financial Officer David Maday told analysts and investors.

“This is our asset-light [driver-as-a-service] framework. This is the one that allows us to build tens of thousands of trucks, and this is where we believe we will surpass 30,000 trucks in 2030,” he said during the company’s 2026 Analyst and Investor Day on Sept. 23.

By the end of 2026, Aurora will be operating 200 driverless International Motors LT Series trucks, which will provide an $80 million annualized revenue run rate.

Aurora’s transportation-as-a-service model is its customer adoption model. But Maday told investors the fleet will be limited to 500 trucks.

Upfitted by Roush Industries

The International Motors LT Series trucks are upfitted by Roush Industries. The company can upfit 20 a week at present. Aurora also has partnerships with Volvo Autonomous Solutions and Paccar, which are installing the hardware and software on factory production lines.

Aurora President Ossa Fisher told Transport Topics recently there was no existential discord for Aurora between the two pathways.

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Aurora President Ossa Fisher. (Keiron Greenhalgh/Transport Topics)

“It’s really customer choice and customer demand. The demand for the Aurora Driver is tremendous,” Fisher said. “We believe there’s demand across all three platforms, and we want our customers to have a choice.”

TaaS is a great customer adoption model, Maday told investors, but it is also capital intensive, so growth will occur with DaaS, as will customer network optimization and cost cutting.

Aurora expects to end 2027 with more than 1,000 trucks on the road, pulling in $200 million in revenue and posting positive gross profit, the executive said. He added that the company would see positive free cash flow on a run-rate basis in 2028 with roughly 7,500 trucks on the road.

Such projections are key for investors in the publicly traded company, whose revenue in the second quarter of 2026 doubled compared with the first three months of 2026 but was still only $2 million. The company expects quarterly revenue to total $8 million by the final three months of 2026.

Losses widened in Q2

But Aurora’s losses widened in Q2 to $270 million from $201 million in the year-ago period and $222 million in the first quarter of 2026. The company’s research and development costs in Q2 totaled $211 million.

Aurora launched its second-generation hardware in July.

Carriers currently using upfitted International tractors are Hirschbach Motor Lines, McLane, FedEx, truckload carrier Charger Logistics, cross-border carrier Value Truck, Werner Enterprises, Schneider and Uber Freight.

$AUR We shared how we’re driving the inflection in autonomous trucking at our 2026 Analyst & Investor Day, including:

→ We’ve surpassed 500,000 driverless miles since commercial launch
→ We’re fully allocated to exit the year with 200 driverless trucks
→ We’ve set a vision…

— Aurora (@aurora_inno) September 25, 2026

Dubuque, Iowa-based Hirschbach Motor Lines inked a memorandum of understanding to buy 500 Aurora Driver-enabled trucks in April, with deliveries scheduled to start in 2027. Hirschbach ranks No. 58 on the TT Top 100 list of the largest for-hire carriers in North America.

The start of third-generation hardware production is expected in the second half of 2027.

Aurora’s third generation of hardware, manufactured by Fabrinet in Thailand, will power all three truck platforms: International LT Series upfitted by Roush and factory-installed Volvo and Paccar systems.