Aurora targets 30,000 driverless trucks and $5 billion revenue by 2030

A steep four-year ramp

Aurora told investors last week that it expects more than 30,000 self-driving trucks on the road producing $5 billion in annual revenue by the end of 2030, according to TechCrunch. The target is striking given the starting point: the company expects to finish 2026 with roughly 200 driverless trucks and an $80 million revenue run rate.

CFO David Maday, who spoke to TechCrunch after the company's September 23 analyst and investor day, argues the number looks less dramatic in context. The four major truck manufacturers together build somewhere between 250,000 and 300,000 new trucks each year, meaning 30,000 autonomous vehicles would still be a small fraction of the overall market. He told TechCrunch he considers the goal achievable rather than merely aspirational.

A new business model to enable scale

Aurora currently operates what it calls a transportation-as-a-service business, a proof-of-concept arrangement it intends to cap at around 500 trucks. The company owns and runs the autonomous vehicles and charges customers — including Detmar Logistics, Hirschbach, McLane and Werner — approximately $2 per mile with a fuel surcharge included, a rate TechCrunch notes is in line with typical carrier pricing.

The pivotal change arrives next year, when Aurora shifts to what it calls a driver-as-a-service model. Customers will purchase the trucks and take over ownership and maintenance, while paying Aurora a per-mile subscription fee — expected to be about $0.85 — for the self-driving technology, which Aurora continues to maintain along with its hardware. Moving the vehicles off Aurora's balance sheet is central to the scaling plan, and it is likely what investors are watching most closely.

The company expects the growth inflection to begin in 2027. Aurora projects going from 200 driverless trucks at the end of 2026 to more than 1,000 a year later, and it anticipates reaching breakeven gross margins on a run-rate basis in the first half of 2027, with roughly 500 trucks deployed.

Third-generation hardware and partner financing

Another milestone lands at the end of 2027: Aurora's third-generation hardware, the sensors and computers that let the trucks drive themselves. The kit will be mass-produced by Aumovio, formerly known as Continental, which according to TechCrunch will also finance the hardware for Aurora and handle servicing and repairs of the kits for customers. That arrangement reduces the capital Aurora has to carry as it scales.

Geographically, Aurora plans to expand from a handful of states in the southern US to cover the vast majority of the continental United States by 2030. Maday also said he expects the company's cost structure to improve substantially by 2028, which is when gross margins should climb, and confirmed that Aurora still intends to enter the robotaxi market once the trucking business matures.

Wall Street is not yet convinced

Investors have so far reacted coolly. According to TechCrunch, Aurora's shares have continued to slide since the September 23 investor day, closing down 12.42% at $5.29 on Monday. Maday's view is that shareholders still have time to come around, with the real unlock starting in 2027 as the new business model and mass-produced hardware come online.

Why it matters

Autonomous freight has spent years promising cheaper, round-the-clock long-haul trucking, but the industry has rarely attached hard numbers to that promise. Aurora's 30,000-truck, $5 billion plan is one of the most concrete timelines yet for turning driverless trucking into a large-scale business, and its shift to a per-mile subscription model sketches how autonomy companies could become software businesses rather than asset-heavy fleet operators. Whether the 2027 milestones — 1,000 trucks, breakeven gross margins and volume hardware — are met will be a useful signal for the entire sector, and a test of whether investors' current skepticism is warranted.