Driverless 'Robotaxis' Arrive at the Stock Market

"Driverless vehicles have a new public face: Aurora Innovation. Its stock will be a barometer of investor sentiment toward a technology that seems likely to change the world, albeit slowly.

The company, which is working on hardware and software to automate driving, made its market debut Thursday following the closure of its merger with a special-purpose acquisition company. The deal raised $1.8 billion before fees, slightly less than hoped when it was announced in July, to fund Aurora through the final two years before its targeted commercial launch. The stock fell 3% on its first trading day but rebounded to close up 4% on Friday.

Aurora isn't the first company to go public with hopes of delivering a technology expected to upend the multitrillion-dollar market for moving goods and people -- if and when it can be made to work at scale. A truck-focused rival called TuSimple held a conventional initial public offering in April, and two other SPAC deals with trucking startups are waiting to close. But Aurora, valued at $10.6 billion in the merger, is the largest to date, and the only one working on "robotaxis" as well as driverless big rigs.

The company was launched in 2017 by three industry veterans: Chris Urmson spearheaded Google's pioneering driverless-car project before it became Alphabet subsidiary Waymo; Sterling Anderson ran Tesla's autopilot; and Drew Bagnell was a founding member of Uber's team charged with developing the technology. Aurora agreed to acquire Uber's autonomy business last December in a deal that made the ride-hailing giant a big shareholder.

Despite their background in passenger vehicles, the founders' more immediate focus is heavy trucks. Freight routes are usually less complex driving environments than urban centers, but a bigger reason is that highways tend to be similar across the U.S., making the technology potentially easier to roll out at scale.

Scalability seems to be a problem with driverless taxis. Waymo made history by opening its robotaxis to the public in an Arizona suburb more than a year ago, but has been cautious about expanding to potentially more lucrative markets.

Aurora wants to launch driverless trucks in late 2023 and robotaxis a year later. Mr. Urmson envisages using the experience of hauling freight to drive Ubers on highways before taking them into city centers. He touts the advantage of being able to integrate robotaxis gradually into a wider human-driven fleet, rather than trying to create an entirely automated taxi service capable of handling all journey types from the get-go.

The company expects roughly $2 billion in revenue in 2027, the last year in its public business plan, which seems tiny compared with General Motors' hope for $50 billion of revenue for its robotaxi business Cruise by 2030. Since the technology isn't there yet, any such numbers are more or less cautious guesses. Timelines for mass delivery of driverless vehicles have been continually pushed back and could be again.

The longer the technology takes to work at commercial scale, the longer investors will have to bankroll it. Waymo and Cruise have both considered going public, according to press reports, only to turn to private funding rounds for extra cash. Argo AI, backed by Ford and Volkswagen, is also exploring an IPO. Aurora's competitors will be among the closest followers of its newly listed stock." [1]

 Poor Lithuanian  transportation companies. Will have to go bankrupt.

1. Driverless 'Robotaxis' Arrive at the Stock Market
Wilmot, Stephen.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 08 Nov 2021: B.10.