California's Department of Motor Vehicles has approved testing of heavy-duty autonomous vehicles, including driverless semi-trucks, on the state's public roads — a major expansion of the state's self-driving programme that puts self-driving big rigs on the same freight corridors Punjabi truckers drive every day, ABC7 News (KGO) reported.
Source: ABC7 News (KGO)
Aurora Innovation and Kodiak AI have received DMV permits to test their autonomous truck technology on public roads, and Kodiak has already started with a handful of test trucks, TechCrunch reported. Both companies applied this spring under updated DMV rules approved on April 28, which lifted California's ban on testing driverless vehicles weighing over 10,001 pounds and created a path to test, and eventually deploy, heavy-duty autonomous trucks.
Source: TechCrunch
A safety driver is still in the cab — for now
The permits are not a green light for empty-cab trucks. Every test truck must carry a trained human safety operator behind the wheel, and companies may not operate on roads posted at 25 mph or less unless they are on a direct route between destinations, according to the DMV criteria reported by TechCrunch. Developers must also climb a staged ladder — testing with a safety driver, then driverless testing, then commercial deployment — and log extensive autonomous miles first, The Auto Wire reported.
Port operator William Hall, of Coyote Container at the Port of Oakland, backed the move, telling ABC7 that trucking companies' biggest problem is finding and keeping drivers and keeping them safe. UC Berkeley transportation professor Scott Moura noted the trucks could run around the clock without rest breaks, while warning that the jobs at stake are well-paying skilled work.
Teamsters sue, vowing a court fight
Teamsters California has sued the DMV in Alameda County Superior Court, alleging the agency circumvented laws requiring it to study and publicly disclose the possible economic impacts of self-driving trucks and failed to consider safety risks to motorists, TechCrunch reported. In a statement carried by ABC7, the union called the DMV's decision to rush forward with driverless heavy-duty trucks reckless and vowed to use every tool necessary to stop it, including the courts.
California's freight corridors — I-5, Highway 99 through Fresno and the Central Valley, I-10 and I-15 — are among the routes named for autonomous testing, and thousands of Punjabi owner-operators and fleet drivers earn their living on them. A report commissioned by Aurora projects 170,000 self-driving trucks could be on U.S. roads by 2035, about 15% of the trucking market, ABC7 reported.
Aurora and Kodiak are both based in California but until now focused their highway testing in Texas, where Aurora has run a Dallas-to-Houston self-driving service since May 2025. California's decision brings that competition home — with the Teamsters' lawsuit now the main legal obstacle.