Hi everybody. Welcome to Shift, a podcast about mobility. I'm Pete Bigelow, your host and reporter at the Automotive News.

My guests today on the podcast are Matt Buse and Harardo and Tiriano from Aurora Innovation,

the self-driving truck company that's poised to launch commercial driverless

service in Texas within a matter of days. That is Aurora's head of safety and Hararados to company's

senior vice president of government relations. Together, they've both played central roles in

preparing Aurora for this moment, which in the self-driving realm is a pretty big one.

Aurora was founded in 2017 and has been perhaps the most well-funded of the self-driving tech

companies in the trucking space. The company has said that it will start commercial service

sometime in April, so for all intents and purposes, it's days or maybe weeks away. Matt and

Harardo are going to delve into how the company is prepared for this. It's going to launch

Class 8 trucks with no human backups aboard down Interstate 45 in Texas. So from my perspective,

that is the headline this week and in the days ahead.

So we're going to forego our normal headlines.

And without further ado, I am pleased to bring you these two conversations.

First with Aurora Head of Safety, Matt Buse, and then Senior VP of Government Relations,

Harargo and Tiriano.

Matt, welcome to the podcast.

Great to finally have you here.

Hey, Pete, thanks for having me.

It has been a long time coming.

Yes.

So we're on the precipice of this big momentous event where Aurora is going to launch,

...