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An autonomous Peterbilt semi using Aurora’s technology.
Aurora Innovations
Welcome back to Current Climate. Self-driving truck developers have positioned the technology as a solution for the growing shortage of human big-rig drivers that’s a problem for the U.S. logistics industry, raising costs to move goods, especially on long-haul routes. But with the spike in diesel fuel prices created by the Iran war, autonomous technology has another big benefit: reduced fuel consumption.
“It’s not anecdotal. We are actually seeing this in our fleet today. It’s something like a 14%, 15% reduction in fuel consumption comparing when our trucks are operating autonomously versus when our very skilled operators are driving them,” said Chris Urmson, CEO and cofounder of Aurora, the largest public robot truck company. “At diesel prices today, that’s [saving] somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 cents a mile. So for companies that are as focused as our customers are on cost of ownership and delivering value for customers, it’s a big deal.”
The improvement comes from the fact that when operating autonomously, semis typically don’t accelerate as quickly or brake as hard as when driven by humans. Long-range vision systems using laser lidar sensors also allow the system to gauge traffic conditions and speed, such as by detecting upcoming slowdowns.
“The other is that when our trucks are operating, they operate at 65 miles per hour,” Urmson said. “They can go faster if they move into a passing lane to move past something that is slow on the road, but the fact that they drive at 65 miles per hour pretty consistently is a huge fuel economy win relative to driving at 75 miles per hour.”
Under U.S. law human drivers can only be behind the wheel for a maximum of 10 hours a day, a rule that doesn’t apply to robots, which also don’t need to stop for bathroom or meal breaks. So even if trucks are traveling a bit slower in autonomous mode, they’re able to operate more hours per day at the most efficient speed.
“In our last business review with [customer] Werner, trucks operating there are operating … if you look at the annualized run rate, 225,000 miles a year plus, which is meaningfully more than what you see kind of a normal truck being operated,” he said.
Aurora’s target is to have at least 200 fully autonomous trucks hauling commercial loads, mainly in Texas and southern states by the end of this year, and scaling to 1,500 trucks after that, using its next-generation computing and sensor system.
The Big Read
Arc Marine’s electric tugboats are heading for the Port of Long Beach, California.
Arc Marine, Curtin Maritime
How The Iran War Oil Shock Is Helping Launch A Market For Electric Tugboats
The next hot electric vehicle may not come with gullwing doors, a self-driving mode, or the ability to provide backup power to your home. It may be an 80-foot tugboat, nearly four stories tall, built to pull massive cargo ships around the Port of Long Beach.
That’s the bet Arc Marine is making. The Los Angeles startup, cofounded by software engineer Mitch Lee and former SpaceX rocket designer Ryan Cook, launched their electric boat startup to target the luxury watercraft market, selling sleek, fast $300,000 e-boats for wealthy weekenders. Now, with oil prices at historic highs, it’s pushing into the commercial marine space with $20 million battery-powered tugs capable of pulling ginormous cargo ships into container ports. It’s an opportunistic, timely shift from polished recreational toys to industrial machines with brutal duty cycles, big fuel bills and regulators at the door.
Arc’s first commercial boats, being built at a Seattle-area shipyard, are already heading toward proof of concept. Its tech is being used to power the world’s first electric tugs that are about to go into service at the Port of Long Beach, under a deal worth $160 million announced in late 2025. If they perform as well as Arc and initial customer Curtin Maritime expect, the company aims to expand into electric ferries, barges and even military watercraft, CTO Cook told Forbes.
“It’s our strong hypothesis that over the next 10 to 15 years, every segment of marine is going to go primarily electric,” he said. “That could mean primarily hybrid electric, like diesel electric, but the fact is electric is just far more efficient and cost-effective at moving really heavy loads. This happened in the train industry. Now it’s happening in the marine industry.”
Hot Topic
Martin Pochtaruk, founder and CEO of Heliene, on building up a North American solar panel business without using Chinese components
Production of solar panels in the U.S. is rising but there’s continued reliance on imported components from China, such as solar cells. As restrictions on such imports tighten with the elimination of much of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act will that be a problem for domestic producers?
For some. We don’t rely on China.
We’ve been manufacturing in North America since 2010. We started manufacturing in 2010 in Canada and in the US in 2017. So our coming to the U.S. to manufacture was not Inflation Reduction Act-related. We were there before, but because of the IRA, we have grown faster.
Heliene is able to make panels with essentially only U.S. content, but will there be some disruption for other companies with restrictions on Chinese content?
Isn’t that awesome? Yes we celebrate this because we are local. That is the main difference. The Inflation Redaction Act put in a carrot, a tax credit that was available, and still is available, and will continue to be available for manufacturers in some cases.
The original tax credit for solar power generation was put in place by the Bush administration back in 2005 and continued in Trump 1.0, they continued because it was finishing in 2019 and they extended it. Then the Biden administration increased it.
But now there’s a stick instead of a carat. You get the tax credit only if you prove that you’re buying from a company that’s not compromised by a foreign concern and that the product doesn’t have a threshold beyond a certain limit of content that is going down year after year, or components that come from a foreign entity of concern.
So what’s going to happen to U.S. panel plants supplied or backed by Chinese solar companies?
Market consolidation. Those that can’t deny Chinese reliance, because they’ve been using the advantages of the central Chinese government for years and years, they will divest. Others will close. Smaller ones that cannot be sold might end up closing. Others will be taken over by the likes of us or others.
So Heliene will be acquiring more capacity?
We look at everything. This year we are partnering with Corning. We added their factory in Arizona, which they acquired from JA Solar, to our certification. They’ll be making modules for us, modules with U.S. polysilicon ingot, wafer and cells, a fully domestic module and cell. For us, that is more capacity because basically we use our own capacity and we also sell what they can make for us.
You expect to produce about 1.5 gigawatts of panels this year amid a booming solar market. Is it going to keep growing?
Yes, absolutely. This year we’re going to grow 80% versus 2025. When I say we’re cautiously growing, I mean that it’s 50% to 100% year over year.
What Else We’re Reading
SEC proposes scrapping climate-related disclosure rules (Wall Street Journal)
Bezos Earth Fund is off pace to meet its $10 billion climate giving pledge (Bloomberg)
New York state gives up on its most ambitious climate targets (Canary Media)
Climate tech bets on space-based solar power systems, data centers and even extraterrestrial energy grids (Heatmap)