Goldman Sachs was one of the largest underwriters in a recent $483 million public offering by autonomous vehicle company Aurora Innovation Inc. Today CEO Chris Urmson addressed investors at the investment banking giant's Communacopia & Technology Conference.
Urmson once again emphasized that the company plans to have completely driverless trucks on the road in Texas between Dallas and Houston this year, with plans to have a Fort Worth to El Paso, Texas, route soon after, likely next year. He noted that that route would require validation of an engine braking.
"There's a big hill, that means we need to use engine braking and not just foundation brakes. We do that today, we just need to validate it," Urmson said. "As we open new lanes, there will be small, incremental features that we have to add potentially that will go less and less the more places we operate," Urmson said, which he noted will be beneficial to scale.
The next lane the company plans to add is a recently announced expansion to Phoenix.
Urmson was asked about how the autonomy sector, which once was littered with startups, has shifted. From his perspective, "it's awesome."
"As we look at the landscape, most of the folks have left," Urmson said. "We look at this landscape we see that none of our competitors have the OEM partnerships, the tier one partnerships, the scale that's necessary and the capital, so we feel that this is our place where this is our market to go win."
Regulation was also discussed, with Urmson noting that he does not expect the federal government to pass a ban on driverless technologies.
The interview concluded with a question that has defined the autonomy sector — when Urmson thinks consumers will be able to own a driverless autonomous vehicle. While lower levels of autonomy exist in many vehicles today, the most commonly well known being Tesla's autopilot, these vehicles still require a human driver behind the wheel.
"I don't know, I don't see it happening soon," Urmson said. "I'm really excited about what the Waymo folks are doing with Robotaxis. … I think that that is the way to introduce this technology to consumers."
