Aurora Innovation Inc (AUR) 2022 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Greetings. Welcome to the Aurora Second Quarter 2022 Business Review Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) Please note, this conference is being recorded.

I will now turn the conference over to Richard Tame, Chief Financial Officer. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, Alex. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our second quarter 2022 business review call. I'm introducing the call today as Stacy is under the weather. We announced our results earlier this afternoon. Our shareholder letter and a presentation to accompany this call are available on our Investor Relations website at ir.aurora.tech. The shareholder letter was also furnished with our Form 8-K filed today with the SEC.

On the call with me today is Chris Urmson Co-Founder and CEO. Chris will provide an update on the progress we have made across the key pillars of our business, and I will recap our second quarter financial results. We will then open the call to Q&A. A recording of this conference call will be available on our Investor Relations website at ir.aurora.tech shortly after this call has ended.

I'd like to take this opportunity to remind you that during the call, we will be making forward-looking statements. This includes: statements relating to the achievement of certain milestones around the development and commercialization of the Aurora Driver on our anticipated time frame; the timing of availability of autonomy-enabled truck platforms; the expected performance of our business and potential opportunities with partners and pilot customers; expected cash runway; and overall future prospects. These statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or implied during this call. In particular, those described in our risk factors included in our quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2022, filed with the SEC on May 12, 2022 as well as the current uncertainty and unpredictability in our business, the markets and economy.

You should not rely on our forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. All forward-looking statements that we make on this call are based on assumptions and beliefs as of the date hereof, and Aurora disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required by law.

Our discussion today may include non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP measures should be considered in addition to and not as a substitute for or in isolation from our GAAP results. Information regarding our non-GAAP financial results, including a reconciliation of our historical GAAP to non-GAAP results may be found in our shareholder letter, which was furnished with our Form 8-K filed today with the SEC and may also be found on our Investor Relations website.

With that, I will now turn the call over to Chris.

Thank you, Richard. We're pleased to report a strong second quarter. We made critical technological progress toward commercial deployment across multiple fronts. We achieved a significant milestone with the launch and successful demonstration of our fault management system, and we introduced a suite of new driving capabilities in our beta 3.0 release that improved the Aurora Driver's performance on surface streets, ramps, highways and construction zones.

We also expanded our commercial operations with FedEx, launched new pilots with Werner and Schneider and made significant progress with our OEM partners on their respective driverless platforms. It is through this progress that we see a clear path to a driverless future. As we move closer to the launch of our first commercial product, we recognize the value in providing a more tangible way to measure our progress.

In our shareholder letter that we published this afternoon and also on Page 3 in the slide deck, we introduced our road map for the commercial launch of our autonomous trucking product, Aurora Horizon. Our road map outlines progress we have made this year and the work that remains between now and our planned commercial launch. It encompasses the key components and dependencies of our business, the Aurora Driver, operations and the vehicle platforms.

Let me walk through some of the significant milestones highlighted on the road map. For the balance of 2022 and the first quarter of 2023, our technical development work will focus on releasing the remaining capabilities that we expect the Aurora Driver will require to drive commercial loads on our launch lanes. We expect the Aurora Driver to be feature-complete by the end of the first quarter of 2023. Future complete means we will have implemented all of the capabilities necessary for launch and we'll have removed all policy interventions.

As a reminder, we define a policy intervention as an action our operators take to preemptively disengage the Aurora Driver when we know it is not yet capable of confidently navigating a particular scenario. Throughout development and once the Aurora Driver is feature-complete, we expect to continue validation and compiling the evidence for the safety case for our commercial launch. When the Aurora Driver is feature-complete and as we work towards commercial readiness for the Aurora Driver by the end of 2023, we expect to begin sharing a quantified measure of the Aurora Driver's autonomy performance quarterly to show our progress towards this critical milestone.

We look forward to outlining this autonomy performance framework at our upcoming Analyst and Investor Day in September. Earlier this year, we committed to demonstrating our fault management system during the third quarter. Our FMS is designed to actively monitor the health of the vehicle, including the self-driving software, sensors and onboard computer. When it detects an issue, the FMS will intervene navigating the vehicle to a safe stopping location where the issue can be addressed. We achieved this milestone earlier than expected, and demonstrated on Aurora Driver powered trucks operating at highway speeds. This speaks to the incredible work of our team who defined, implemented and validated over 1,000 requirements to achieve this milestone, while also making rapid advances across a range of other technological areas critical for commercial deployment. We have included a video of the demonstration on Page 4 in the slide deck.

Engineers injected artificial faults representing sensor damage. The system detected these faults, assess their severity and responded by activating the autonomous vehicle hazard lights, reducing its speed and safely pulling over to the side of the road. As with other elements of the Aurora Driver, the fault management system was developed and extensively tested first in simulation, enabling safer and more rapid implementation in the real world.

As we move towards commercial launch, our fault management architecture will advance to recognize and respond to additional safety issues while on the road. I experienced this system in action firsthand in June when I joined our vehicle operators during testing just outside of Fort Worth. It was a thrilling moment that demonstrated the maturity of the Aurora Driver. This is the foundational capability for removing vehicle operators and a meaningful step towards satisfying the failsafe core claim of our safety case and ultimately delivering a safe, commercially ready driver.

During the second quarter, we also released Aurora Driver Beta 3.0, continuing our commitment to deliver quarterly technical updates that advance the Aurora Driver. This update debuted capabilities to enable end-to-end autonomous operation between Aurora's terminals and shows how the Aurora Driver can safely navigate increasingly complex and critical situations that are necessary for the deployment of our commercial trucking product. We have included a few videos in the slide deck to bring some of these capabilities to life.

On Page 6, after exiting our El Paso terminal, you can watch the Aurora Driver making an unprotected right turn onto the westbound frontage road and proceeding to execute a Texas U-turn to merge onto I-10 eastbound to Fort Worth. Additionally, the Aurora Driver can now handle long downhill grades using engine braking to avoid excessive wear and the danger that comes from overheating brake pads.

In the video on Page 7 of the slide deck, you can see the Aurora Driver on the Fort Worth to El Paso route descending Ranger Hill on I-20 for 3 miles at a 3.5% downgrade. Without engine braking, this hill cooks brake pads, reducing their life dramatically. Now the Aurora Driver autonomously applies engine breaks, increasing safety for all drivers on the road.

And on Page 8 of the slide deck, the Aurora Driver is on the highway and plans to change lanes as indicated by the green path, but another vehicle has aggressively cut into the lane. I'm sure we've all had similar experiences where we've had to make split-second decisions about how to adjust our driving. Here, the Aurora Driver recognizes that another vehicle is now occupying the space and safely returns to its lane, ultimately, executing the lane change once it can safely do so. The National Highway Transportation Traffic Safety Administration data shows that 9% of all accidents occur during lane changing and merging on highways.

Given this relative frequency, we've continued to refine the logic by which the Aurora Driver reasons about and negotiates lane changes with other actors. During the third quarter, we plan to launch capabilities that include identifying and responding to debris and navigating even more complex construction zones, including the detection of lane markings that have shifted. These advancements put us on the path for the Aurora Driver to be feature-complete by the end of the first quarter of 2023 and commercially ready by the end of 2023.

While we are bringing new capabilities online, we are simultaneously improving our performance on existing capabilities. As you can see in the chart on our shareholder letter, over the course of the second quarter, we drove a significant improvement in required vehicle operator interventions for localization issues on the Fort Worth to El Paso lane with no intervention seen in the final weeks of the quarter. This improvement stand from advancements in our HD mapping system, the Aurora Atlas and the Aurora Driver that enabled our vehicles to better adapt between using lane markings and geometric data to precisely position themselves. These developments make the Aurora Driver's performance more robust in construction zones and highway segments with few distinct road features such as signs and off-ramps as well as long stretches of rapidly growing vegetation. All of these conditions are common on rural routes like Fort Worth to El Paso.

Now turning to our pilots. During the second quarter, we doubled our commercial miles driven across our pilots and lanes and also saw improved autonomy performance when compared to the first quarter, further demonstrating our progress towards the commercial launch of the Aurora Driver.

One of the most tangible ways to measure our performance and progress is the feedback we receive from our customers themselves. Given our strong performance since the launch of our pilot with FedEx, we further expanded our collaboration with them earlier this year, growing our pilot to include the 600-mile Fort Worth to El Paso Lane. We're currently autonomously hauling FedEx loads under the supervision of vehicle operators daily between Dallas and Houston and weekly between Fort Worth and El Paso.

Demonstrating our autonomous technology through this pilot is one key aspect. Equally as important is that we are operating this pilot in a commercially representative manner. This means FedEx expects these vehicles to perform to its exacting requirements for scheduling drop-and-hook trailer operations and on-time delivery. We're pleased to report that across each dimension, our pilot suite has delivered. To date, this pilot has allowed both Aurora and FedEx to refine our operations and prepare for future growth. We are proud of our performance since the launch of the pilot.

Through the second quarter, we have delivered over 335 loads driving over 80,000 cumulative miles with 100% on-time performance and with no cancellations. With each trip, the Aurora Driver is providing thousands of FedEx customers with packages that were autonomously transported. We're excited to have been invited by FedEx to their Investor Day earlier this summer to share how we are integrating the Aurora Driver with their network, and you can get a flavor for the operational elements of this partnership in a video that FedEx developed, which we have included on Page 10 in the slide deck.

We continue to see broad demand to apply our technology. This week, we are launching our fourth pilot. Aurora-powered trucks will autonomously haul freight under the supervision of vehicle operators for Schneider National, one of the industry's largest multimodal transportation providers. We'll begin with weekly hauls on our Dallas to Houston Lane, and we expect to increase that frequency as our relationship expands. We look forward to working with Schneider to understand how best to incorporate autonomous trucks into its fleet with the goal to improve efficiencies and address the growing demand to move goods.

We believe the sheer breadth and diversity of our customer pilot programs, including: FedEx, the largest less-than-truckload free carrier in the United States; Werner, a top 5 full-truckload carrier; Schneider, one of the largest multimodal carriers; and Uber Freight, a significant freight broker is a testament to both our industry-leading technology and operational excellence. These programs set us apart in the autonomous freight space. Through strong execution on our pilot programs, we are continuing to build trust and credibility in the industry. We believe the strength of these relationships positions us for an effective driverless commercial launch when our technology is sufficiently mature to meet our rigorous safety standards and the requisite truck platforms already.

On that front, we continue to make significant progress with both PACCAR and Volvo trucks in the preparation of scalable, autonomy-enabled truck platforms. Working in close partnership, our teams have defined product requirements aligned on detailed technical requirements, selected and awarded key component suppliers, designed key interfaces between the Aurora Driver and the vehicle platform and built initial prototypes. As strong as the collaboration progress has been, these programs are not immune to the industry challenges we continue to see.

Taking into account current supply chain constraints, we now expect the delivery of scalable, autonomy-enabled truck platforms in the first half of 2024. While this program timing is later than we had originally expected, we see the recent awarding of key supplier contracts as a major point of schedule risk reduction in these programs. With the delivery of the truck platforms, we expect to be able to complete final validation of the integration of the Aurora Driver with the truck platform in preparation for release of a scalable trucking product by the end of 2024.

Turning to the regulatory landscape. As we work closely with our vehicle partners toward delivering our product, we also continue to engage with policymakers on their support for safe deployment and development of self-driving technology, and ultimately, how, together, we can make our roads safer and transportation systems more efficient.

This past quarter, we continue to build legislative and regulatory support in California and Pennsylvania. We work with others in our industry to encourage regulation to permit deployment of autonomous trucks in California, and we joined others in the industry in advancing legislation in Pennsylvania that would facilitate fully autonomous operation in the state.

Additionally, as we set the foundation for our future expansion, I'm pleased to share that the State of Arizona has granted Aurora's request to test and operate in their state, and we have submitted notification of our intent to operate in New Mexico. From a regulatory perspective, this now allows Aurora to commercially deploy our self-driving technology in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona when we're ready to do so, bringing us one step closer to deploying on one of the busiest freight quarters in the country from Dallas to San Diego.

Finally, I'm immensely proud of our safety culture at Aurora. We finished the second quarter celebrating National Safety Month, an opportunity to reinforce, recognize and reflect on our safety practices, while also giving the team an opportunity to hear from safety experts outside of Aurora. At Aurora, we put an emphasis on developing and implementing safety best practices to ensure our employees are empowered and have multiple outlets to raise safety concerns without fear of retaliation.

We review and address this feedback to continuously improve our technology, policies and internal practices, and I'm proud to share that during the second quarter, we reviewed and closed 100% of safety concerns raised within the quarter. Everyone at Aurora from our vehicle operators to myself plays a role in safety by speaking up if something doesn't meet Aurora standards.

In closing, remaining laser-focused on our plan and executing on what we can control is imperative in the current environment. Our first priority and where we are focusing our capital is the commercialization of Aurora Horizon. We expect disciplined focus and prioritization to help extend our cash runway to mid-2024. We can't wait to show the world what the Aurora Driver can do as we advance our mission to deliver the benefits of self-driving technology safely, quickly and broadly.

I will now pass it over to Richard, who will review our financial results.

Thank you, Chris. We recognized approximately $21 million in collaboration revenue during the second quarter of 2022 and $145 million cumulative to date the development work associated with our agreement with Toyota. We have now recognized substantially all of the revenue under the agreement and received substantially all of the cash as well. While our first priority is commercialization of Aurora Horizon, we believe this work and other long lead efforts will spring-load us for the eventual launch of Aurora Connect.

During the second quarter of 2022, our market capitalization declined below our carrying value of net assets [triggering a] $1 billion noncash reduction in the carrying value of goodwill. There is no change to our outlook for the businesses we have acquired nor how we expect them to contribute to our commercialization. Including the reduction in the carrying value of goodwill and $46 million in stock-based compensation, operating expenses totaled $1.2 billion. Excluding these noncash expenses, operating expenses were $171 million. Within operating expenses, R&D expenses, excluding $41 million in stock-based compensation, totaled $142 million primarily comprised of personnel costs as we continue to invest in our industry-leading autonomy work.

SG&A expenses, excluding $5 million in stock-based compensation, were just under $29 million.

Turning to cash flow. We used approximately $90 million in operating cash which reflects the inflow of $48 million during the quarter related to the Toyota agreement. Capital expenditures totaled $4 million. We ended the second quarter with a very strong balance sheet, including $1.4 billion in cash and short-term investments, enabling us to continue to develop the Aurora Driver for commercial deployments at scale.

With that, we will now open the call to Q&A.

(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from the line of Tom White with D.A. Davidson.

I guess, first off, Chris, I just wanted to make sure I understood kind of your latest expectations around the timetable for commercializing the trucking product. It seems like you guys are tracking ahead of schedule on some of the technical milestones like fault management and the FedEx collaboration, but the letter touched on the kind of the delay as it relates to the trucking platforms. So maybe just kind of like net-net, are your expectations around kind of commercializing trucking slipping a bit? If you could just elaborate there a little bit. And then I had a follow-up.

Yes. So as you point out, we feel like we're making very good progress on both fronts. On the internal development of the Aurora Driver, the team is making great advances. And in the road map we've shared, we've kind of outlined some of the concrete capabilities we expect to be delivering over the coming quarters to get to feature-complete. And then from there, we're kind of in the fun part where everything is working, and it's refining things and getting to the quality of performance we need to be confident in the Aurora Driver operating on the road.

To ultimately deliver a commercial product, we need vehicle platforms as well that have redundancy and interfaces that enable the Aurora Driver to operate them safely. Our partners are making great progress. We're working closely with them, and we think kind of the largest risk part of those programs has now been retired, and that's the selection of some of the key tier 1 selection and awarding of a couple of the major tier 1 contracts. And so that will ultimately lead to us being a little bit later than we had intended or expected with the commercialization of the truck.

It's note -- I think it's important to note that today, we are actually operating commercial loads for folks like FedEx, as we pointed out, where we're hauling goods on routes, and we expect to continue to be doing that through the coming years.

Okay. That's helpful. And then maybe just a high-level question on kind of how this industry and ecosystem evolves. And specifically, as it relates to kind of like the blur between partnerships and competition, I noticed during the quarter that one of your key partners and shareholders announced -- Uber announced a long-term strategic partner with Waymo and I feel like this industry is just right examples of kind of competitors who are partners and vice versa. I was hoping maybe you could just talk a little bit about how you see this space kind of evolving over the next several years, particularly as it relates to kind of these overlapping kind of partner and competitor dynamics.

Yes. So maybe I'll talk just directly about the Uber relationship, and then I can talk more broadly about how we see the industry evolving. So with Uber, as you are probably aware, we acquired their self-driving business at the beginning of last year. And part of the logic behind that, for Aurora, it was about bringing amazing people on board. It was about bringing great technology and it was about putting in place a partnership with the world's leading ride-hailing platform and an important freight platform as well.

Part of the logic from Dara's side and from Uber side was that they really wanted to focus on being the network and serving their customers and optimizing what they do best. And so it was from day 1, the conversation I had with Dara and our team has had as we negotiated that acquisition was we'll focus on the driver, they focus on the network. And we understood that this was not going to be exclusive in either direction, and that made sense. And we expect to compete with other folks building automated vehicle technology. And frankly, we're betting we're going to be the best of that, right, and do what we do well.

More broadly, we see the industry evolving. So I think that the current financial climate is going to help separate a little bit the wheat from the shaft, right? The teams that have the ability to actually deliver this product, they're going to be able to raise capital when needed at some point in the future, and they're going to deliver on the product. And we see it helping clear some of the playing field, frankly.

We do expect consolidation to continue. It's been something we've been talking about from very early on the company that it's a totally appropriate new industry so there'll be lots of players out there exploring the space. But those of us who know what we're doing will be able to kind of continue to make progress, deliver the technology, execute on our mission and create shareholder value.

That's very helpful. Maybe I'll just have one last one. In the letter, you indicated that by the end of this year, you plan to begin sharing initial allocations of your launch capacity with customers. Curious, can you talk maybe just a little bit about how you kind of prioritize who gets the allocation and how you distribute them? I mean on one hand, maybe it's just a kind of a revenue or pricing kind of maximization thing, but I suspect it's not purely kind of who would pay the most [review], but just curious for any kind of color or detail you can share on that process.

Yes. So we really put a lot of effort into building alignment with our partners, and we -- and make sure that what we're doing is helping create value for them and their businesses. And so as we get into those allocations, it will be alignment around kind of the routes that we're operating on and where those partners see the most value. And so I don't think I can share more than that with you today.

Our next question comes from the line of Steven Fox with Fox Advisors.

A couple for me, if I could, please. First of all, with the delay in the supply chains on the trucking side and you're still -- it sounds like you're still advancing steadily on your own technology, any implications for the rideshare goals that you've set out previously? And then I have a couple of follow-ups.

So we think that focus matters and particularly in this economic climate and so we're going to be putting more emphasis on trucking and making sure that, that product makes it to market. We still see the value in the ride-hailing market. We have the deep partnership with Uber. We have an amazing partnership with Toyota. But we expect to be shifting resources more to trucks to make sure we get that out the door and deliver there first.

Okay. That's helpful. And then from a safety aspect, Chris, you emphasized over and over again how the company has a safety-first aspect to the strategy. It seems to be shining through. I haven't heard of any kind of incidents with your vehicles as you've been ramping up some of these pilots. One of your peers has had an incident where it seems like they also had some operational issues in terms of how it was recognized, et cetera. Can you just sort of reinforce that point in terms of talking about what safety issues the company has had to date, and how you're handling some of the issues as they do crop up during the pilots? And then I have one last question.

Happy to. So as we -- as you say, we put safety first. It's -- if you look at our mission, delivering the benefit of self-driving technology safely, quickly and broadly. It's the first of those adverbs there. For us, it starts with the culture that we build right from very early on. We had techniques for employees wherever there were in the organization to flag safety concerns, allow us to bring the fleet down and then address those concerns. We have put in place kind of the best in practice safety management system. We have a broad safety consumer reporting system where we anonymously or -- not anonymously, allow people to flag concerns that they have.

Proud to say that I think in Q2, we closed all of the raised safety concerns and took appropriate action where relevant. When it comes to the actual operation of the vehicle, we have a technology that, again, has been in place since basically day 1 that we call the checklist system, and this is maybe -- this is getting a too geeky for a call like this, but it's effectively an automated system that reviews, I think, at this point, around 1,900 individual elements to make sure that they're operating within range. And so we would know if -- and prevent the system from ever even attempting to enter autonomy if a subsystem hadn't been started or if messages were too out of date to be relevant anymore.

So that kind of operator kind of disconnect, just you have to design for that, right? People are fallible. And so they're one part of the safety system and we have to build the rest of the system around it to make sure that we minimize the overall risk of what's happening out on the road.

Great. That's really helpful. And then just lastly, in terms of -- in the context of the change in the time line, any -- I haven't studied the chart that you're publishing today, but how do we think about like how many more pilot runs you're able to do before you ramp versus the previous goals?

I'm not sure I -- I'm sorry, I'm not quite sure I understand the question.

Well, it seems like there's a delay on the truck that you're going to be running a lot more pilots. So between now and commercialization, it seems like you're going to have a lot more testing under your belt than maybe you would have previously. I don't know if there's a (inaudible).

Yes. So one of the things is we do continue to ramp up the number of trips that we're pulling for partners out on the road, and we kind of outlined a time line for that in the road map. And then there is this kind of ancillary benefit, if you will, that we anticipate the Aurora Driver being ready on the same time frame that we had said. And then we will have a period of time where we're out there operating and will have even kind of more real-world experience with that out in the world before we end up removing the operator from onboard. And so that can only be a good thing.

Our next question comes from the line of Mark Delaney with Goldman Sachs.

First was trying to better understand the revenue recognition implications from the change in the commercial launch. My understanding had been you do need that commercial truck in order you can start -- in order to start recognizing revenue with the Horizon and the load you're probably now aren't counting for revenue. Will that still be the case if you get to a feature-complete next year, you still can't recognize revenue until later in '24 when you have those trucks? Or could you still recognize revenue late '23 like you've previously been thinking?

Sure. So I think, as Chris mentioned before, every day that we're pulling the loads, we are getting paid for those. It's a very small amount of revenue relative to the size of the P&L. So we're currently booking that as contra R&D expenses. So that's going to kind of continue for the foreseeable future. Our product is not to pull loads for people with human drivers. It's to have an autonomous and enabled platform without a vehicle operator in there. And thus, that's when we really think that we'll start recognizing revenue.

As we go through sort of 2023 and into 2024 and as we scale up the number of trucks that we have doing those development runs and the validation, I think there'll be a conversation with our account -- our external auditors about if and when we flip. But from our internal perspective, we don't expect to show commercial revenue until we have no vehicles -- no vehicle operators in these trucks.

Okay. And sorry, just to clarify, that would coincide with receiving these trucks in mid-2024 or early '24 when it would launch commercially?

Yes.

Okay. And then thank you for the update on the cash runway and having cash on hand through mid-'24, but that's just around the time or even just a little bit before the time before that commercial launch. So maybe help us understand how much cash would you need in order to support a commercial launch.

Yes. So I think we ended Q2 with a very strong cash position with $1.4 billion of cash and short-term investments on the balance sheet. And we believe that's sufficient to take us into mid-2024. We expect progress along the road map that we've outlined today, we shared today, will support us being able to access the capital markets at a time -- when the time is right. So we have the ability to wait, see what's happening in the markets, hope the macro environment improves. And then progress along the road map should help us to raise capital at a price that we find attractive.

Yes, I reckon maybe somewhat variable based on how much revenue and the size of the launch you're going after. But I mean, do you have a minimum figure you need to support a commercial launch in late '24? Is it too hard to say?

Yes. That's not something we're going to say.

Our next question comes from the line of David Vernon with Bernstein.

I also wanted to thank you for including the time line on Page 4 of the shareholder letter. I have a question for you around this notion of feature-complete. I mean are we thinking here about being feature-complete in kind of any operational design domain? Or is this really around the initial rollout areas within Texas? I mean complete is a pretty specific word. And I'm just wondering if there is a third dimension to this chart in terms of thinking about when we're feature-complete for applications within the Texas Triangle, within the Southeast, within the North, whatever that is, is that -- can you talk a little bit about what that scope of feature-complete means?

Yes. So we expect that to be -- that's feature-complete for the initial launch lane. We do expect that as we expand into different areas, there will be some feature that gets added. But kind of the bulk of the development work to enable Texas Triangle, Southwestern U.S. is kind of ready at that point to be refined and validated to get to Aurora Driver ready.

Okay. That makes sense. And then as you think about the progression along here, when we're -- can you help us maybe think about how many trucks would be available during that initial launch kind of from where we are today? And then if there's some additional kind of color you can put around the supplier approvals and how that impacts the runway for equipment availability. I'm just -- I'm trying to -- I've been trying to work with some clients, I'm trying to figure out, okay, how many trucks might there be at a launch date along this time line. And I'd love to just kind of get some guidance from you guys in terms of how to think about that, not guidance for exactly how many trucks they're going to be because I know you probably don't know that, but how to think about it would be helpful.

Yes. So part of what's been happening with -- between us and our partners in -- on the truck side is making sure that the platform that gets developed is truly scalable, which means that the work -- the hard work between our partner and the tier 1s is in place where the road release for those components is ready to go. And so from a truck scalability point of view, our expectation is when those trucks are ready is that they will be able to scale meaningfully. For us, as we think about commercial launch, we think about it as kind of getting the first 20-ish vehicles out on the road without operators in them and then beginning to build the scale from there.

Okay. So 20-ish is the right number around there in terms of driverless?

Well, again, like 20-ish is what we are thinking about, but the important work that's being done on the vehicle side is to enable that to just grow.

And then how does the supplier...

I was going to say, you spoke of -- that's kind of what I'm trying to speak to is you mentioned kind of the supplier release approvals. And again, I probably can't get too deep in this. But the intent is that, yes, these are vehicle platforms that are not kind of special one-off, you can do a field operational test with them, right? It's a product.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of the question-and-answer session. This does conclude today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. We thank you for your participation, and have a wonderful day.