Aurora CEO talks Nvidia partnership, autonomous trucking benefits
Self-driving technology developer Aurora Innovation (AUR) is partnering with Nvidia (NVDA) and Continental to aid in its deployment of driverless trucks. Aurora stock jumped by over 30% in Tuesday's session after announcing these collaborations, with shares now settling and closing the trading week just slightly higher. Aurora CEO Chris Urmson explains "Nvidia provides a really critical part of our system" — the Aurora Driver system that enables the autonomous vehicles — "the processor that our algorithms run on." Nvidia's Drive Thor and DriveOS (operating system) will be integrated into the Aurora Driver system. "If you're a trucking company today, you're limited to driving that vehicle 11 hours a day because people get tired. With what we're building with the Aurora driver, you should be able to operate that vehicle more like 20 hours a day," Urmson further elaborates, adding that this will reduce the dangers of stress and sleep deprivation for long-haul commercial truckers. "The driver won't get tired. So you can run longer at lower speeds, so you have more fuel economy, which is good for the environment and good for the bottom line. And, of course, while driving a truck is a really important job and we should be thankful for anyone who's willing to do it, there aren't enough people who actually want to do it because it's a tough job." Urmson also discusses with Market Domination's Julie Hyman and Josh Lipton the pre-revenue company's competition with other self-driving truck innovators — such as Tesla (TSLA) — and its current customers, such as FedEx (FDX) and Uber Freight (UBER). To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination here. This post was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.
