When Will Autonomous Semi Trucks Reach Industrial Scale?
Aurora Technologies announced plans for 200 autonomous trucks by year-end, aiming for a 1,000-truck annual run rate by October, potentially generating $80 million in revenue. While Aurora shows progress in lane validation, its current partner, Roush, is not equipped for industrial-scale production, which typically involves hundreds of thousands of Class 8 trucks annually. In contrast, major players like Volvo Autonomous Trucks, also partnered with Aurora, and Daimler Truck with Torc, are poised for significant scaling. Volvo targets fully driverless operations by Q1 2027 and industrial deployment by 2028. Daimler, North America's largest semi manufacturer, aims for Level 4 autonomous trucks by 2027. Experts predict 2028 will be the year autonomous trucks achieve industrial scale, though regulatory challenges in most states remain a hurdle.
Aurora Technologies announced at a town hall for retail investors that they are on track to have 200 fully autonomous trucks on the road and in operation by the end of the year. They are partnered with Roush. They will be building 20 trucks a week by October — a 1,000-truck-per-year run rate.
In other good news, lane-opening time has compressed. This is the time required to validate that their trucks can operate safely on a new transportation lane. Their first lane took 8 years to launch, and our third lane took 6 weeks. Chris Urmson, the CEO of Aurora, said “we continue to see that accelerating.” The company has 10 active lanes today and plans to expand across the Sun Belt through 2027-2028. Aurora has moved beyond the science experiment phase of the business.
With all trucks in operation, that means Aurora could generate $80 million in revenue each year through transportation-as-a-service agreements. That certainly puts them on the path to commercial viability. Commercial viability does not translate to selling trucks at an industrial scale.
Getting 1000 new autonomous trucks on the road next year is not industrial scale. In 2025, U.S. Class 8 truck sales totaled about 209,000 units. And 2025 was a down year.
Roush is not the right partner to scale them. Roush is best known for high-performance automotive engineering, aftermarket modifications for Ford vehicles—especially the Ford Mustang—and success in professional motorsports. They don’t have a large truck assembly plant.
A Class 8 assembly plant costs at least a billion dollars, and that is a conservative estimate. Volvo Trucks has an existing truck factory in Dublin, Virginia. They spent $500 million to build a second plant, a body-in-white plant, and to upgrade their main production facility. But this second plant is a support plant, not a full-blown final assembly operation.
But Volvo Autonomous Trucks has also partnered with Aurora. The company said it will remove the safety driver and go fully driverless on U.S. highways in the first quarter of 2027 on its flagship VNL platform. By the end of 2027, the company believes it will be operating more than 300 autonomous trucks on U.S. highways. Industrial-scale deployment is planned for 2028. Volvo Trucks can scale. They could ramp production 10x without breaking sweat.
And then there is Torc and its owner, Daimler Truck. Daimler Truck and Torc aim to enter the U.S. market with SAE Level 4 autonomous trucks by 2027. The Torc autonomous software package will run in Daimler’s Freightliner Cascadia. Daimler Trucks is the largest manufacturer of semis in North America. They also clearly can produce autonomous trucks at an industrial scale.
Daimler Truck is also pursuing a version of the Freightliner Cascadia powered by Waymo. But the availability target for that solution is said to be “in the coming years.” So, it is further out.
While the autonomous trucking industry is littered with broken promises and missed deadlines, both Volvo Trucks and Daimler have a reputation as being conservatively run companies that do what they say they will do.
In short, it looks like 2028 is the year autonomous trucks reach industrial scale, a scale where thousands of trucks are produced a year, not a few hundred.
Thereafter, further scaling may depend upon the regulatory and legislative process. There are only four states -California, Texas, Arizona, and Michigan – that allow testing and deploying of autonomous trucks weighing more than 10,001 pounds.