Dive Brief:
- Aurora Innovation’s truck production ramp fell six weeks behind schedule due to material shortages and component quality issues, executives shared during the company’s Q3 earnings call Oct. 28.
- “These, of course, were unplanned challenges,” CEO Chris Urmson said during the call, adding Aurora has “taken the time to make sure that the quality of the components meets the stringent reliability thresholds we have.”
- Aurora and upfitter Roush aim to produce 20 trucks per week across two shifts by early December. The company expects to have built 200 trucks by February and more than 1,000 trucks by the end of 2027.
Dive Insight:
The delay comes as Aurora starts building trucks at volume on its second-generation hardware. That platform, released in July, provided the foundation from which the company could scale.
Preliminary builds completed before the company’s Sept. 23 investor day “were looking quite good,” Urmson said, but problems surfaced once production scaled. During the investor day event, Aurora announced its targets of 30,000 trucks and $5 billion in revenue by 2030.
“We, of course, swarmed the team on this. We’ve been working hard to overcome it, and we’re excited about the improvements we’ve made,” Urmson said.
In some cases, the fix has been finding alternative suppliers. Wire harnessing, for example, will be outsourced to a “more capable production supplier,” CFO David Maday said during the earnings call.
Maday said the problem is not component pricing but making sure the parts were right for the company’s new platform.
“This didn’t have or doesn’t have cost impacts for us. In most cases, this was cost neutral to even potential savings, especially if you look at the reduction in the rework and the quality benefits of it,” Maday added.
Aurora anticipates a cash spend of $250 million in Q4 as it continues to ramp production of its driverless fleet.
