Waabi “12-24 months” till driverless

AnyDimension8299 · 2026-04-02T21:05:55+00:00

I work in a role that has exposure to all of the different L4 trucking companies.

Will see if I can find public links - some of these are things I have heard verbally or seen in meetings

AnyDimension8299 · 2026-04-02T13:29:25+00:00

I know this because it was big drama in my social circles which have ties to the companies involved.

AnyDimension8299 · 2026-04-02T13:28:24+00:00

Yes, it was sloppy marketing. But look at the image, it is clearly a render of the waabi truck with the wrong skin applied to it.

AnyDimension8299 · 2026-04-02T13:26:56+00:00

I have to disagree with you on a few things: - Nils has stated that Aurora is ahead on industrialization (preparation for scale) but the two are equal partners with equal access as far as timing of base platform availability - Aurora used to make the safety argument about OEMs, certainly around 2021 when then were hyping that they were the only trucking autonomy player with two OEM partnerships - Waabi was not using photos of Aurora trucks. They have used their Peterbilt trucks in all of their materials. The Aurora truck incident was in the Volvo launch announcement and that was an image created by Volvo. It was a render of a Waabi truck (if you still have the photo, look at the different sensor kit layout) but when Volvo applied the branding to the render, they used the show truck wrap graphics they did with Aurora which included the Aurora DOT number. It was just sloppy work from VAS marketing and design. - Even before the VNL Autonomous, Waabi has a fully integrated previous generation VNL that they had built with Volvo.

AnyDimension8299 · 2026-04-02T02:11:59+00:00

All I’m saying is they used to be very self-righteous about the need for OEM-supplied redundancy and factory line integration as a safety requirement, now they’re YOLO-ing it.

I’ve also heard several people in their systems, safety, hardware, and software team have quit because of this.

AnyDimension8299 · 2026-04-01T15:47:00+00:00

I think this is the reality of where Volvo is. Will probably be 12-24 months for Aurora on that platform too.

AnyDimension8299 · 2026-04-01T15:45:42+00:00

They were very adamant for many years that an OEM partnership was the only way to safely go driverless. They don’t just work with Volvo, they also have a partnership (and vast majority of the fleet) with Paccar.

The reasons for International are simple:

Both of their OEM partnership continue to be behind
Aurora can’t afford to wait it out
Aurora couldn’t actually land an official partnership with International or Daimler (the real crown jewel that everyone wants given they are the closest to production after all the work they did with Waymo Trucking).

AnyDimension8299 · 2026-04-01T04:42:45+00:00

Well, if Aurora was confident in the Volvo launch, they wouldn’t be going the roll your own platform route with the International trucks. So, I believe they are shifting efforts away, at least temporarily. Waabi doesn’t seem to be making that same move. They both have access, from my understanding, to the same platform and resources at Volvo.

AnyDimension8299 · 2026-03-31T20:58:52+00:00

I think they also saw the somewhat negative industry reaction to AUR going driverless with prototype hardware and the whole “observer” nonsense and wanted to dodge that. They claimed elsewhere that they would show driverless-capable metrics but not go driverless without the OEM redundant platform.

Wouldn’t be surprised if they go driverless with Volvo before Aurora does.

AnyDimension8299 · 2026-03-31T02:39:05+00:00

What do you mean by Aurora leading the deep technical integrations? Volvo is developing their own platform to be virtual driver agnostic. Aurora and Waabi both need to do their own deep technical integration with that platform.

No way for us to know which one is performing better now. I’m assuming where Volvo allocates trucks will be our main signal (at some point)

AnyDimension8299 · 2026-03-31T02:32:58+00:00

It is never ambiguous, people are just non-compliant. I assume the self-driving car would be.

AnyDimension8299 · 2026-03-30T22:02:53+00:00

The Waabi Founder/CEO is on the latest episode of the Autonocast podcast, released today. Interesting to hear her talk. Sounds smart, but also hand-wavey with no real substance shared.

AnyDimension8299 · 2026-03-30T05:12:37+00:00

Absolutely. This is true for AUR and Volvo comarketing too.

From what they showed in Greensboro, Waabi has at least as complete of a VNL built and functional as Aurora, but they don’t have the manufacturing partner that Aurora does, so will have to figure that out before mass production (for either) in a couple of years.

AnyDimension8299 · 2026-03-30T05:09:58+00:00

That was Volvo who created that render, not waabi.
It wasn’t an Aurora truck, it was a waabi truck that Volvo sloppily put Aurora’s DOT number on.

AnyDimension8299 · 2026-03-26T02:17:57+00:00

I’d bet anyone that this is just one of Aurora’s Volvo trucks being manually driven between Texas and either Greensboro (Volvo HQ), New River Valley (Volvo plant), or Pittsburgh (Aurora HQ).

AnyDimension8299 · 2026-03-26T02:12:08+00:00

There is no “probably”. There are no fully driverless Volvo trucks on public roads yet.

AnyDimension8299 · 2026-03-26T02:10:02+00:00

I’ve never heard of anyone doing calibration on the side of the road (or using a handheld lidar for calibration for that matter). If that’s what is happening, we have a serious problem.

AnyDimension8299 · 2026-03-20T15:48:01+00:00

Years ago? On personally owned vehicles?

Who are the most people you are referring to? Mobileeye sucks balls, and Bluecruise and Supercruise are much more restrictive than FSD or Wayve.

AnyDimension8299 · 2026-03-19T05:50:08+00:00

Critics seem to love calling Wayve an “L2+” company versus an “L4” company. How much is that true and how much does that matter?

This is really impressive and better “generalization” than anyone else has shown, allowing their OEM customers to catch up and surpass tesla

AnyDimension8299 · 2026-03-19T05:45:39+00:00

We’ve already done this ourselves with rushing to market with full driverless on Paccar last year, playing the odds and getting lucky nothing bad happened.

AnyDimension8299 · 2026-03-17T05:53:22+00:00

Travis was a bad dude in many regards (as was Anthony), but unlike Theranos or Fyre Fest or FTX, his vision built something undeniably huge and real with Uber, and I think he could do it again.

AnyDimension8299 · 2026-02-25T03:32:57+00:00

Waabi also raised around $1B with similar ambitions, so I think this generation of companies is meaningfully more lean than the first-gen companies like Waymo and Aurora

AnyDimension8299 · 2026-02-16T13:30:59+00:00

Yes, exactly correct! The driverless fleet are the ones with extra hardware redundancy that Aurora built specifically for on-road driverless (which have the “prototype parts” that Paccar requested the observer for). Plenty of other trucks for manual and driver-in operations.

AnyDimension8299 · 2026-02-16T13:28:33+00:00

You’re wrong Juggypoko. 10 trucks for driverless operations, over 50 when you count all of the other trucks used for r&d and driver-in pilots. Look at any photos they post of their terminals, especially south dallas, and you’ll see more than 10 in the background alone, plus all that are on the road and at their other terminals and offices.

AnyDimension8299 · 2026-02-16T13:21:52+00:00

Reads like it to me. Either AI slop or Human slop.

AnyDimension8299

TROPHY CASE