A self-driving truck company that has promoted its system as a way to cut climate pollution from the freight industry has delayed its plans to put vehicles on the road.
Aurora Innovation had planned to start operating driverless trucks between Houston and Dallas later this year. The company now says it will begin in April.
“The No. 1 element is safety. It’s much more important to ensure that we get it right than to meet an arbitrary date,” David Maday, the company’s chief financial officer, said Wednesday on a call with analysts.
Aurora has been testing its trucks with safety drivers in the cab on highways in Texas, and the decision to continue testing wasn’t prompted by dangerous incidents, Aurora’s CEO Chris Urmson told analysts. He said the company’s safety assessment is 97 percent complete but that the trucks’ systems need improvements in a few areas, such as negotiating road construction.
