Aurora reports Q2 results, details per-mile pricing

Driverless truck rates split by business model

“Obviously the TaaS deals have a higher per mile revenue outlook because it’s the full service,” Maday said. “As we’ve said before, kind of in that $2 plus range, whereas DaaS is targeting the $0.85 plus. There’s a substantial difference in TaaS versus DaaS on a revenue side, but there’s also a substantial difference on the cost side and on the margin side.”

Aurora describes the shift as customer-by-customer rather than a single cutover.

“For every customer that we sign up with a Transportation as a Service agreement, it is with the intent to then move into the DriverasaService in the following year. That’s why we’re actively working with multiple folks,” Maday said. “If you’re a Transportation as a Service customer today, we would expect that you’ll start to add Driver as a Service business model in 2027.”

The anchor for that transition is Hirschbach Motor Lines. CEO Chris Urmson said the Iowa-based refrigerated carrier is expected to put 500 tractors into its fleet across 2027 and 2028 under a memorandum of understanding announced in April, and that the agreement will set the template for later deals. Final commercial terms and a binding agreement were expected to close later this year. Hirschbach runs 2,948 power units, so the commitment amounts to roughly a sixth of its fleet.

“That really will create the framework for the rest of the partnerships that we have in the space,” Urmson said. “Customers want to own these assets. They want to see the benefit from it.”

Insurance moves with the model. Maday said Aurora carries coverage on every truck today because it is the DOT authority holder under TaaS, and that per-truck rates reflect the system’s safety record.

“When we shift over into Driver as a Service, this is an opportunity for both sides,” he said. “For our customers, it’s an opportunity for them to have an increased level of confidence and reduce incidents in safety and coverage for them. All things that they don’t have today.”

Analysts pressed for more detail on the economics with Aurora’s OEM partner, Volvo and got little. Morgan Stanley’s Ravi Shanker asked whether Volvo, which projects $3 billion in autonomous revenue within five years on trucks running the Aurora Driver, had shared the math behind that target.

“We certainly can’t share anything of Volvo’s model with you,” Urmson said, adding that Aurora has a clear understanding of the economic arrangement between the two companies.

How driverless truck rates compare with fleet costs

Aurora’s figures land close to what fleets already spend, though the two sets of numbers measure different things.

The industry-average cost to operate a truck was $2.336 per mile in 2025, the highest in the history of the American Transportation Research Institute’s annual operational costs report, released July 15. Driver compensation accounted for $1.028 of that, split between $0.818 in wages and $0.210 in benefits. It was the first year ATRI’s combined driver compensation figure topped $1 per mile.

That puts Aurora’s DaaS target of “$0.85 plus” a mile, roughly 17% less than what a fleet currently pays to employ a driver, according to Aurora. The subscription replaces the driver line while leaving fuel, equipment, maintenance, insurance, tires, and tolls with the carrier. Aurora has not said what share of terminal or remote-assist cost shifts to customers under DaaS.

A caveat: comparisons are directional rather than exact. ATRI measures carriers’ actual costs across sectors and fleet sizes, and its figures are 2025 actuals. Aurora’s are a forward-looking revenue outlook and a target for a fleet that does not yet exist.

Geography cuts the same way. Aurora’s lanes are concentrated in Texas, and the South-Central U.S. is the cheapest region ATRI tracks, at $2.23 per mile against the $2.336 national average, with driver wages of $0.781 versus $0.818 nationally. Measured against the lanes Aurora actually runs, the gap narrows.

The utilization gap is wider. ATRI put average annual mileage at 85,991 miles per truck in 2025, up 4% and rising steadily since 2022. At the bottom of Aurora’s stated rate range, the mileage implied by its own run-rate math is just under 200,000 miles per truck, more than twice the ATRI average. That assumption carries much of the weight in Aurora’s economics.

The fleet math behind an $80 million run rate

Aurora said it is fully allocated to exit 2026 with 200 driverless trucks, which it said equates to roughly an $80 million annualized revenue run rate for the TaaS business.

“We’re fully allocated to 200 trucks,” Maday said. “200 trucks at the end of year equals roughly a revenue run rate of $80 million.”

Spread across the fleet, that works out to about $400,000 per truck a year, and at the bottom of Maday’s stated range it implies just under 200,000 revenue miles per truck. The shareholder letter refers to “more than 200” trucks, and the $2 figure is a floor, so real per-truck revenue and mileage may come in lower.

That implied utilization rests on the round-the-clock running Aurora pitches as the core benefit. The company’s shareholder letter describes the Aurora Driver as adding “the potential for 24/7 capacity on key long-haul and high-volume routes.”

Aurora reaffirmed full-year 2026 revenue guidance of $14 million to $16 million, up 400% at the midpoint by the company’s math, with the fourth quarter expected to contribute more than half of the total.

Getting there depends on manufacturing. Upfitter Roush has begun building at a dedicated Aurora facility and is expected to reach an annual run rate of 1,000 trucks in October. Aurora expects 20 to 25 second-generation trucks in service by the end of the third quarter, from roughly 25 trucks operating across all generations today. That puts the bulk of the buildout in the fourth quarter.

Urmson flagged the risk in that schedule. “As you know, there’s a ramp-up that it takes whenever you stand up a new manufacturing line,” he said. “We also understand that there may be challenges along that path. We’re trying to provide what we think is reasonable guidance to where we expect that to net out.”

Older Peterbilt units will be phased out as International and Volvo platforms take over, though Urmson said Aurora expects to reintroduce Peterbilt trucks once its third-generation hardware is ready. Maday said Aurora would fund more company-owned trucks if demand warranted. “I think we’ve shared before that we’d be willing to support up to 500 TaaS trucks if needed,” he said.

Hardware cost is the margin lever

Aurora expects its second-generation hardware kit, deployed commercially for the first time in late July on the International LT platform, to cut Aurora Driver hardware costs by more than 50%. Aurora says the kit is engineered for 1 million miles of operation.

“In terms of the 50% cost reduction, this is what we’ve been talking about for some time, is how that second generation hardware ultimately allows us to get to a point where we can operate the business with unit economic profitability,” Urmson said.

Maday acknowledged component cost pressure but said it does not move the margin math when spread across the kit’s service life. “Certainly, there are some headwinds in terms of costs, but these kits are also designed and expected to last a million miles,” he said. “Some minor increases in component costs when you look at [it] on a unit economic basis … for gross profit over a per mile basis, are not materially going to impact our gross margin projections.”

A third-generation kit built by AUMOVIO, formerly Continental, has a planned start of production in the second half of 2027. Aurora’s 10-Q says the company plans to rely on AUMOVIO as a single supplier for that hardware and warns it “may be unable to find alternative suppliers to satisfactorily deliver its products, if at all.”

Funding the ramp

Aurora used $225 million in operating cash during the quarter and spent $31 million on capital expenditures. That operating figure sits above the company’s guided range of $190 million to $220 million a quarter; Aurora said the quarter landed within target once $63 million in cash bonus payments funded through its at-the-market equity program are excluded.

The company issued 30 million Class A shares through that program during the quarter for $215 million in net proceeds, lifting shares issued and outstanding to 1.998 billion from 1.943 billion at the end of 2025. Aurora ended June with nearly $1.2 billion in cash and short-term investments and said in the 10-Q that its liquidity is sufficient for at least 12 months.

What carriers are buying

Aurora added TaaS agreements with Charger Logistics on the Dallas-Laredo lane and Value Truck on Dallas-Laredo and Fort Worth-Phoenix, and has started to haul frac sand for Detmar Logistics with nobody behind the wheel between Midland and Monahans, Texas. Volvo Autonomous Solutions is running Aurora-powered freight for DSV and AVI-SPL in Texas.

Aurora said the Aurora Driver has logged nearly 440,000 driverless miles since launch through June 30, with a 100% on-time performance record and no collisions attributed to the Aurora Driver, against more than 6 million cumulative commercial miles.

Urmson disclosed one collision that fell outside the reported quarter. An Aurora truck in manual mode, with the autonomy system not engaged, was struck in Fort Worth in July by a vehicle that ran a red light. Both vehicles sustained significant damage and no serious injuries were reported. Urmson said log review and simulation confirmed the Aurora Driver perceived the other vehicle nearly six seconds before impact and would have slowed to avoid it.

Urmson said carriers are adopting the technology for capacity and asset utilization rather than headcount cost, and said he has made the competitive case before.

“This technology is so impactful, transformational, improving safety, improving fuel economy, improving utilization, for customers, that if you’re not using our stuff in the next five years, you just won’t be competitive in long haul,” he said.