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Aurora’s premier product, the Aurora Driver, can be utilized to autonomously function passenger automobiles, gentle business automobiles and heavy-duty vans. | Supply: Aurora

Ford and VW introduced this week that the businesses can be ending their funding in Argo AI, a self-driving firm with partnerships with Lyft and Walmart, and that the corporate can be shutting its doorways.

A few of Argo AI’s round 2,000 workers would both be receiving provides from Ford, whose president and CEO mentioned the corporate anticipated to make a number of hundred provides, or VW. The remainder can be let go and obtain severance packages that embody insurance coverage and two separate bonuses. 

Chris Urmson, the co-founder and CEO of Aurora, a self-driving firm that has partnerships with Toyota and Uber, shared a observe to Aurora’s publication concerning the latest information. 

Urmson’s total observe might be learn under. 

Sorry to interrupt your commonly scheduled programming, however main information was introduced within the self-driving trade yesterday and I wished to share my perspective.

Argo is shutting down.

First, my ideas are with Bryan Salesky and your complete Argo crew—this trade is small, everyone knows one another effectively, and many people right here at Aurora have labored with the Argo crew, watched them develop, and seen the influence they’ve made. It’s disappointing, and it’s unlucky, and their absence will probably be felt in Pittsburgh and within the bigger AV trade.

However I additionally wish to be clear that this isn’t a sign {that a} future with self-driving know-how isn’t actual or imminent. The truth is, it’s fairly the other. Waymo just lately introduced the enlargement of their robotaxi fleet to LA. Cruise is charging for his or her driverless robotaxi rides in San Francisco.

And as for us? We’ve lengthy believed that long-haul trucking is the easiest way to enter the market, and that it will likely be the primary vertical inside the autonomous car trade to generate important income, in order that has been our focus.

We’re making autonomous freight deliveries day by day for pilot prospects like FedEx, Werner, Schneider, and Uber Freight. The truth is, if you happen to received a FedEx parcel that received shipped from Houston, there’s an opportunity that it sat in one among our vans on the best way to you.

We’ve shut, collaborative partnerships with PACCAR and Volvo Vans (which collectively produce virtually 50% of all Class 8 vans in the USA) and with main transportation leaders like Toyota and Uber. These corporations see the long-term worth of autonomous automobiles, and our independence provides them the power to put money into it with out shouldering the price of growing this know-how alone.
Lastly, we’ve a transparent path, plan, and timeline to market.

I’ve been on this trade for practically twenty years, and on this second, proper now, I imagine we’ve by no means been nearer to delivering self-driving automobiles to the world. Extra importantly, this know-how has by no means been wanted extra. Over 40,000 folks died in automobile crashes final yr, up 10% from the earlier yr. Trucking is an over $700B enterprise, shifting over 72% of the nation’s freight by weight, however we simply don’t have sufficient drivers to maneuver all of it. It’s additionally harmful – there are virtually half 1,000,000 accidents involving vans a yr. Self-driving know-how just isn’t a science undertaking. It is without doubt one of the subsequent main technological improvements that may remodel our society—for the higher—and we’re making constant, regular, and thrilling progress in direction of getting there.

So, with that, I flip you again to The Dashboard and to some significant updates from the final month—together with extra element about how our autonomous trucking service Aurora Horizon will work for patrons once we launch and the way we practice the Aurora Driver to soundly reply to pedestrians.

Oh, and yet another factor. We’re hiring! We’ve over 160 positions accessible throughout the nation, and we want a crew with the experience, dedication, and fervour for taking over this once-in-a-generation alternative head-on. If that sounds such as you and also you wish to be on the crew that will get this know-how on our roads and transforms transportation, please come be a part of us.

—Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora