Aurora Innovation and Kodiak AI, two firms creating self-driving vans, have obtained permits from the California Division of Motor Automobiles to check their autonomous automobile expertise on public roads. And Kodiak has already began.
Kodiak mentioned it’s beginning with a handful of take a look at vans in California, primarily round its Mountain View workplace.
Each firms utilized for testing permits this spring below up to date guidelines permitted by the California DMV, the company that regulates autonomous automobiles within the state. These guidelines, permitted April 28, lifted a ban on driverless automobiles weighing over 10,000 kilos from testing on public roads and offered a regulatory path for firms to check, and ultimately deploy, autonomous heavy-duty automobiles.
Kodiak and Aurora met the DMV’s allowing standards, together with security, insurance coverage, automobile registration, security driver qualification, and different necessities, in line with the company. The testing permits require a human security operator to be behind the wheel and prohibit firms from working on roads the place the posted velocity restrict is 25 miles per hour or much less, until they’re on a “direct route” between locations.
Regardless of these restrictions, the prospect of self-driving vans on California’s highways continues to gas opposition.
Final week, Teamsters California sued the state’s DMV, alleging that the company circumvented legal guidelines requiring it to check and publicly disclose the potential financial impacts of permitting self-driving vans on public roads. The lawsuit, filed within the state’s Superior Court docket in Alameda County, additionally accused the DMV of failing to think about the security dangers to motorists.
For autonomous automobile builders, the brand new guidelines permit them to check and ultimately deploy of their residence territories.
Aurora and Kodiak are each are based mostly in California, however till just lately targeted their testing and deployment actions in Texas due to their home-state’s ban on autonomous heavy-duty vans. Aurora launched a self-driving truck service in Texas in Could 2025, beginning with a Dallas-to-Houston route. The corporate has added extra routes since, together with between Fort Worth and El Paso, El Paso and Phoenix, Fort Value and Phoenix, and Laredo and Dallas.
Kodiak started commercial driverless truck operations in January 2025 in an off-road surroundings in West Texas’ distant Permian Basin. Kodiak has since expanded to on-highway operations, together with a route between Dallas and Houston.
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