Driverless trucking – ‘On the cusp’ of a revolution

Thomas Wasson

Fri, Mar 7, 2025, 8:00 AM 5 min read

Autonomous trucking is gaining the attraction of Wall Street with Morgan Stanley initiating coverage of autonomous motortruck exertion institution Aurora Innovation connected Monday. Ravi Shanker, equity expert astatine Morgan Stanley, writes that contempt taking years longer than expected, “Trucking yet appears to beryllium connected the cusp of an autonomous future.”

Morgan Stanley believes that Aurora is the astir blase on-highway, Class 8 autonomous solution among peers, with the April rollout of its commercialized driverless operating being a cardinal milestone for some Aurora and the industry. However, equity analysts are much bullish than manufacture executives, believing that the improvement of autonomous trucking “has achieved capable flight velocity to beryllium considered a existent and credible commercialized enactment for galore commercialized fleets.”

Shanker writes that if each goes according to plan, the adjacent 12 months volition spot the manufacture logging thousands of miles of driverless operations from trucking fleets, placing autonomous trucking successful the aforesaid “real” class arsenic rider robotaxi fleets.

Compared to the astir half-dozen different autonomous trucking companies astir to motorboat driverless commercialized operations, Shanker notes that Aurora’s plans for its April driverless commercialized motorboat springiness it a caput start. Morgan Stanley besides sees on-highway operations arsenic the astir analyzable task for autonomous trucking compared to peers similar Kodiak and Gatik, which are revenue-generating contiguous with adjacent applications similar off-highway oregon last-mile.

While Morgan Stanley deems Aurora the wide person successful the abstraction for now, “We proceed to judge that the marketplace volition apt extremity up being divided amongst respective players implicit time.”

There is simply a caveat: Aurora’s enactment could let the institution to summation an insurmountable pb implicit its peers. That would necessitate tying up cardinal OEM, bearer and work partnerships.

For manufacture peers, the agleam broadside is that there’s a ample full addressable market, oregon the wide gross accidental for a merchandise oregon service. Morgan Stanley estimates that astir 90% of the $1.3 trillion U.S. home freight proscription market, oregon astir $1.17 trillion, could yet beryllium accessible to autonomous trucking solutions.

Autonomous trucking institution Bot Auto announced connected Tuesday its plans to docket continuous driverless commercialized freight operations successful 2025. The company’s docket includes a minimum four-month aviator programme of regular driverless runs betwixt Houston and San Antonio, hauling cargo for customers.