Self-driving truckmaker Aurora Innovation has reported that it has expanded commercial operations with more than 20,000 driverless miles completed, begun driverless commercial operations at night, and opened its Phoenix terminal.

Aurora has expanded driverless operations on the Dallas-to-Houston lane to now include nighttime driving. This more than doubles potential truck utilisation, significantly shortening delivery times on long-haul routes and creating a path to profitability for autonomous trucking, according to the company.

Aurora’s new terminal in Phoenix opened in June. It demonstrates an infrastructure-light approach that according to the company, resembles how Aurora plans to integrate with future customer endpoints. This optimises for speed to market and enables Aurora’s plan to deliver freight directly to customer endpoints.

Fort Worth to Phoenix is nearly half the distance of the busy Atlanta to Los Angeles freight corridor, taking more than 15 hours to complete. Self-driving trucks can halve transit times, especially on long routes that exceed the 11-hour driving limit for human drivers. Aurora is currently making autonomous hauls on this lane for Hirschbach and Werner.

“Efficiency, uptime, and reliability are important for our customers, and Aurora is showing we can deliver,” said Chris Urmson, co-founder and CEO of Aurora. “Just three months after launch, we’re running driverless operations day and night, and we’ve expanded our terminal network to Phoenix. Our rapid progress is beginning to unlock the full value of self-driving trucks for our customers, which has the potential to transform the trillion-dollar trucking industry.”

Aurora is working with a number of companies across the transportation ecosystem, including Continental, FedEx, Hirschbach, NVIDIA, PACCAR, Ryder, Schneider, Toyota, Uber, Uber Freight, Volvo Trucks, Volvo Autonomous Solutions, and Werner.