Aurora and Kodiak move self-driving truck tests to California roads after regulatory ban lifted

Aurora Innovation and Kodiak AI, specialists in developing self-driving trucks, have obtained official permits from the California Department of Motor Vehicles to test their autonomous vehicle technology on public roads, with Kodiak already operating a limited number of test trucks around its Mountain View headquarters. This comes after the two companies submitted applications for the permits in the spring, based on the updated regulations adopted by the California Department of Motor Vehicles, the agency responsible for regulating the self-driving vehicle sector in California.

The new regulations end a long-standing ban imposed by California on testing heavy self-driving trucks, paving the way for a commercial deployment phase in the state.The rules, approved by the department on April 28, lifted the previous ban on testing self-driving vehicles weighing over 10,000 pounds on public roads, outlining a regulatory path that allows companies to test and eventually deploy heavy autonomous vehicles. The department confirmed that Kodiak and Aurora met the permitting criteria, which include safety requirements, insurance, vehicle registration, and safety driver qualification, as well as other technical and regulatory requirements.

The testing permits granted impose specific restrictions on operations, most notably requiring companies to have a human safety operator behind the wheel while the trucks are in motion. The rules also prohibit trucks from operating on roads with a posted speed limit of 25 miles per hour or less, unless the truck is traveling on a direct route between two specific points. These regulations allow developers to return to testing in their home state, as both Aurora and Kodiak are based in California, but had previously focused their testing and deployment activities in Texas due to the ban in their home state.

The opening of California routes follows a notable expansion of autonomous trucking routes in Texas and neighboring states.Aurora launched its self-driving truck service in Texas in May 2025, starting with a route between Dallas and Houston, then adding other routes, including the route between Fort Worth and El Paso, the route from El Paso to Phoenix, the route from Fort Worth to Phoenix, and the route from Laredo to Dallas. In contrast, Kodiak began its commercial self-driving truck operations in January 2025 within a unpaved environment in the remote Permian Basin in western Texas, before expanding to operations on public highways, including a route between Dallas and Houston.

Despite these stringent standards, the launch of self-driving trucks on California's highways still sparks legal and union objections. The California Teamsters union has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Motor Vehicles in Alameda County Superior Court, accusing it of circumventing laws requiring the study of potential economic impacts of allowing self-driving trucks on public roads and publishing those findings to the public. The lawsuit also accuses the department of ignoring risk assessments that could threaten the safety of human drivers on the roads, reflecting the intense regulatory and economic debate surrounding the entry of these trucks into the state's streets.