Continental and Aurora have completed the design and architecture of the future fallback system and hardware of the Aurora Driver, a SAE Level 4 autonomous driving system that Continental plans to mass produce starting in 2027.
The final hardware design came less than a year after the companies entered into an industry-first high-volume manufacturing partnership autonomous truck systems reached. Bringing new hardware to market is complex and time-consuming, often taking years from initial design to start of production. Aurora partnered with Continental early on to develop reliable, easy-to-maintain, and cost-effective autonomy-enabled hardware kits for mass production. This allows production to be scaled.
The partnership will enable Aurora to deploy autonomous trucks at scale after the initial launch of its driverless vehicles in late 2024. With Continental’s experience in automotive development and manufacturing, the future Aurora Driver is designed to deliver customer value for a million miles.
Aurora is also working with Continental’s world-class engineering team to develop an industrialized fallback system that is expected to enter production in 2027. Autonomous vehicles require built-in redundancies to operate safely without a human driver. One such mechanism is the fallback system – a specialized secondary computer system that can take over operations if the primary system fails.
Continental and Aurora also share their four-year partnership roadmap to commercialize thousands of autonomous trucks: blueprint and design (2023), construction and test (2024-2025), finalization, start of production and integration (2026-2027) and scaled deployment (from 2027). During these phases, the hardware is developed, tested and integrated into production and maintenance processes at Continental’s facilities before thousands of trucks using the Aurora Driver autonomously transport freight across the United States.