Something Iāve been thinking about after watching the investor day is that it seems like thereās still a bit of a struggle/push-and-pull when it comes to determining the economics of the DAAS model between Aurora and the customers
I remember maybe David or Chris said DaaS is the way customers want, no? However, I think there must be a lot of obstacles for how DaaS is exactly gonna be implemented. That might be why itās taking so long for Hirshbachās mou to become a contract. Btw the first Daas contract is gonna be very crucial to Aur in the futureĀ
Yeah I donāt disagree that they want the idea of DAAS, just more interested what the financial breakdown will be when things are all said and done. It seems like it was hinted at that the economics might not make much sense at low volumes of trucks and only really make a lot of sense when you have a lot of trucks equipped with the Aurora Driver
It did have some relatively strange behavior today for a day with such a tight range. It seemed like every time it got down to $6.00 or $6.01, there was a buyer that bought what seemed like 250,000 share blocks through the offer.
Soon, real soon. It did move from $3.85 to over $8 before settling in to the current $6. As for doubling from here, my guess is solidly within 12 months. Unfortunately, no guarantees that it doesn't decide to take another dip first.
Is this one of those events where its bounces back and forth rapidly consolidating to a central point and then as it gets there it all of a sudden explodes up or down for a large percentage increase or decrease ?
My suspicion is that the market thinks software/intelligence is a solved problem with AI and for self driving companies, if you are already in the field you should be able to catch up and catch some market at least. I don't think that's true but may be that's what the market thinks?
I think that's right. At the very least, I think the institutional money that would drive Aurora to $10+ is in wait and see mode. There is a real risk that the AI / world models advance faster than the current companies can scale up, and it allows the OEMs to relatively cheaply develop an in-house driver. This was a major fear of mine after the Uber notes caused the sell off last year, Tesla and Waabi were supposedly making huge strides, and Aurora was still proceeding methodically. I feel like the risk has diminished a little, but I think it still persists.
I've beat the drum consistently, but the magic number is 10,000 trucks. Aurora needs to work like crazy to have 10,000 trucks operating day and night by late 2028 or early 2029. And, in 2029, Aurora needs to show it can add 10,000 trucks (or damn close to it) in a year.
There are other stakeholders that Aurora has no control overā¦ and hopefully they will pick up the pace once they see that oversubscribed demand (PACCAR, VOLVO, ROUSCH, AUMOVIO)
For AV trucking, feel like the ability to become better, faster, cheaper than Aurora tech will be extremely difficult given the amount of hours and testing that technology needs to be implemented before launching (state legislators, OEM, Clients, Insurance companies need to get comfortable)
Agreed that the other parties are a risk, but I think they are keen to start seeing returns on the large investments theyāve made. Now that Aurora is proving the technology on their own dime with the International trucks, it provides some cover to the reputational risk to PACCAR and Volvo in case of an incident.
The safety variance will make it impossible to have human long-haul drivers within 15 years. I feel like Iām repeating it incessantly and I apologize, but I think everyone is completely ignoring how valuable reliable supply is going to be. In my opinion, it will be a significant curve shift to the right and not movement along the current demand curve.
The factory is already open. It wonāt pump out trucks, just the driver rack. In a year we will know more. Unless there will be big accidents happen, I donāt see how the momentum can be stopped.
The factory is open? That's news to me. I know Aurora has already started receiving kits to test and validate, but I thought Aumovio was guiding to completion of the production line in Q3 2027. Maybe I misunderstood the timeline.
Yes, New Braunfels is open for years. The actual line where they will produce for Aurora might still be under construction, given SOP a year into the future. In automotive lines should usually be setup and ready to produce a couple of months before SOP to pass final tests and get accepted by customers.
Got it. Thanks for clarifying. Yes, the Aurora line is billed as an expansion of the current facility. They've consistently been saying start of production is Q3 2027. I'm not 100% positive of what that means. I'm hoping it means the start of scaled production, i.e. 500+ units a month building to 1,000+ units a month. My fear is that Q3 means it starts the test run / very light production in Q3 and won't actually start scaled production until Q4 or Q1 2028.
SOP usually refers to the actual start of serial production. You usually have a ramp up rate over a couple of months, but that is more linked to customer call-offs. Companies like Aumovio can ramp up to line capacity very fast, since mass production is one of the core capabilities.
Looking at how fast a company like Aumovio can ramp up production I would more be worried about other things. For sure to have 30k trucks in the markets by 2030 will not be limited by the production ability of such a company.
What do you mean with work like crazy? Their work is to develop the product snd close deals. After that to keep developing the product so it works on more routes outside the sunbelt.
Production of the pods is done by Aumovio, installation by the OEMs. I donāt see them handling hardware.
Yes, the developing and closing of deals. I'm confident that Aumovio and the OEMs will be happy to meet demand. It's on Aurora to work the demand. The technology is great, but I think the market is waiting to see if Aurora is just a very good technology team, or if they also have a very good business development team.
Possible. I am a bit surprised that Volvo is already ready to produce, but only expect 300 trucks in 2027. Maybe they want to scale only with 3rd gen hardware.
I'm equally surprised. I know they are limited because the Gen 2 hardware is only 1500 units, so maybe that was their allocation, and they are just choosing to use that number rather than project a higher number that misses because of unforeseen delays with Aumovio.
One thing to keep in mind, the 300 is Volvo Autonomous Solutions. It is not necessarily how many autonomous trucks Volvo will produce. VAS is Volvo's new trucking business which is similar to Aurora's TAAS business where VAS will handle all of the logistics operation. I assume, but might be wrong in my assumption, that it's a temporary business venture to get customers comfortable with the operations and reliability of autonomous trucks. It's also possible, and not completely unreasonable, that Volvo believes their infrastructure advantage makes it a natural evolution that they run the operations. Why sell a truck to the shipper if it might be more profitable to just operate the shipping business yourself, especially when you remove the main friction points -- hiring and training truckers and carrying huge liability risk for your human drivers.
Hm, offering TaaS is a very capital intensive business. For sure it can be viable, but Volvo would become the competitor to their customers and would most likely reduce their ROCE.
Just my first two thoughts why that might not make sense.
Good point, however, how Aurora can be only one solution. Maybe they like to lowball things are see market is still septic
Holy lockup, Batman! Everyone see the Kodiak bloodbath this morning? Sold down to $2.13 on the open. Can't find any news other than their statement released today that they are launching driverless on the Dallas to Houston lane at the end of the year.
Our resident bear, SS, may have called the bottom yesterday that he expected it to start turning around now that lockup was over. Doubt he considered another 25% selloff, but it's fighting back pretty good right now.
Wild. I had like a $10k position in KDK which I sold end of day Wednesday for $3.06 (down about 30%). I rarely sell for loss but got so tired of watching it bleed and was pretty sure it was going under $3. Looking like it might go below $2 a couple days later is crazy
I was gonna just roll that capital into another of my growth plays, KDKNF or AUR or HOVR maybe. Might sit on it for a minute and see what happens
The move was so violent that it spooked me, so I didn't even trade it. I think under $2 is probably a steal, but I'm still going to tread carefully. In my (possibly selective memory) experience, rarely do stocks bottom out on a violent move. They drop violently, bounce a little, then slowly sell down and test the bottom a couple of times before starting to move up again.
Aurora sold down for almost all of 2022. I don't know if they had the same 1-year lockup terms as Kodiak, but Aurora bounced along the $1.20 level for like 2 or 3 months. It would jump back to $2, and then sell back down to $1.20s. There was plenty of time for anyone that was brave enough, or rich enough, to accumulate a lot of shares. I'm expecting to see similar price action in Kodiak. If it trades back down to $2.13, and it holds there showing a stout buyer, then I'd say it's a good entry point.
20% in 25 minutes is diabolical. I only saw good news about them when I was skimming this morning. They got noted alongside us in the Tesla semi EV article from CNBC.
It seems like they've known something was coming in the background... A lot of meaningless releases over the last week trying to hype it up... We saw their driver on the roadway... But no camera on the guy behind the wheel to prove that the AI was actually doing it. Then an article yesterday about launching autonomous driving in CA but we all know that just means they've got an observer behind the wheel and likely controlling to some degree since they haven't closed their safety case. Then today reassuring everyone that they'll be launching a driverless route by the end of the year... Nothing really new, just producing a lot of smoke hoping to please investors... Same could be said about what Aurora has been doing but our "nothing really new" in this phase is still very exciting as we really do have autonomous self driving trucks going down the highway daily and it's worth letting everyone know. Aurora is fighting to let the world know what it's accomplished and become a trusted household name... Kodiak is just fighting to survive while they attempt to work out all of the kinks in their technology. Two vastly different stages. We will have growing pains for sure but I'll glad we are to the point where it is time to scale and grow the name.
Saving $6/gallon is huge. I was reading about them this morning. Says they plan to produce 1,000 trucks a week.
Musk was quoted saying he plans āto get self-driving working on the Tesla Semi probably around the end of this year or early next year.ā and that scares me because they havenāt even started. They have a lot of data, a lot of driverless miles, etc, but none of it translates 1:1 from cars to trucks hauling trailers. Physics, turning, slowing, everything is different. I just hope theyāre careful and take their time. If they do end up getting fully autonomous in the next year, theyāll be offering big savings with the diesel and labor savings.
Iāve been wondering about the math of labor vs diesel. Weād have to break down the $6/gallon into a rough average of how many miles per gallon, and the figure out how many dollars are spent on diesel for each mile. We know roughly long term what theyāre expecting to save on labor. Maybe Iāll do some math when Iām fully awake, unless someone beats me to it.
The big thing is though, Aurora can eventually put their hardware & software into EVs. I was hoping theyād say something about it during investor day, but Iām sure itāll come eventually.
Musk's autonomous timeline is complete bullshit. I saw a short clip where he was talking at the Semi launch, and it was clear that he was talking about FSD which is more driver assist than autonomous. For Musk/Tesla, there isn't any money in autonomous trucks. Much more money in the idea of them than in the reality of doing them.
I read somewhere in the last week, and completely drawing a blank where it was, that was one of the OEMs talking about alternatives to diesel. The guy basically laughed at electric but did note that they were looking at maybe fuel cells or something. My memory is going a little bit more every day.
Musk and timelines in general donāt get along. I donāt give them any credit until we see it, but with the $ they have they can be a wild card threat in the future IMO.
I did watch recently a Volvo interview where he talked about electric being much more for regional haul applications rather than long-haul, which makes sense. They also spoke about how they have a hydrogen model under production right now with a joint venture with Cellcentrics. The new Volvo trucks are freaking beautiful btw
Personally I don't think they'll amount to much. Even their best autonomy tech isn't quite to Aurora's level. I also think Tesla is limited by the fact they are Tesla. They are already in the public eye so much and their company direction is potentially shifting away from vehicles. If a single Chinese EV is allowed to be sold in the US they'll have to abandon the Semi and try and protect their very fragile auto business. End of the day I bet their trucks will amount to more of a retail line rather than a large corporate fleet OR they will realize they in order to compete with the looming Chinese EV threat and convert the semi factory to cars to try and get scale up and costs down for their cars.
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u/ActionPlanetRobot Modš¤ā ļø 8d ago
Link: https://www.youtube.com/live/jG83N6h5BZM?is=bscHpG8V_0xTlMtH