According to the Verge, Amazon funded self-driving company Aurora will test a small vehicle fleet at the highways near Dallas-Fort Worth area in the next few weeks. The fleet will be composed of Chrysler Pacifica minivans and class 8 trucks, equipped with Aurora’s FirstLight LiDar. The company has previously tested self-driving technology in San Francisco Bay Area and Pittsburgh areas.
Founded in 2016, Aurora is positioned as a full-stack autonomous driving solution provider. The company wrapped up series B funding last February, receiving $530 million comes from Amazon, T. Rowe Price Group, and Sequoia Capital. Its founders are a trio of renowned experts —— Chris Urmson, former Google autonomous driving lead, Sterling Anderson, former Tesla’ Autopilot Project head, and Drew Bagnell, former head of Uber ATC. Aurora has acquired Montana-based LiDar R&D company Blackmore, and speedily launched its own FirstLight.
The Verge: https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/20/21331418/aurora-self-driving-cars-semi-truck-av-texas-robotaxi
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I wonder how their cooperation will end and whether people will then turn to amazon customer service en masse to solve problems with their child products. I think they also supported a similar project, because they want to take their place in this niche
Gonna be interesting to see if that reduces expenses on delivery/makes delivery faster(I’d assume those can operate during night probably?). Been looking through amazon optimization services like https://webycorp.com/ and I wonder how huge seller needs to be to get access to testing those.