Uber Freight CEO joins self-driving truck company Waabi, says era of autonomous big rigs on U.S. roads is here

CNBC

3 days ago

Lior Ron, founder and CEO of Uber Freight, is joining self-driving truck startup Waabi as chief operating officer.
The move, Ron says, is based on his belief that the era of autonomous big rigs on the roads at scale is here, with the freight industry to be transformed by the economics with driverless technology in the semi cab.
"The first decade of my career in logistics was building Uber Freight, putting the rails in place to usher in the era of digitalization for logistics," Ron said. "It's time to focus on the most fundamental shift of the next decade, which is automation. I can't think of something that will be as helpful to the next era of logistics and innovation and how goods are being moved. The technology is now here," he added.
Waabi expects fully driverless trucks to be handling freight routes across the U.S. Southwest by the end of the year. The region was chosen as the first area of the nation to deploy the technology at scale due to the massive amount of freight that travels in the Sun Belt, from states including Texas and Arizona to California, and the lack of severe weather conditions like snow and ice (removing one variable for the autonomous technology to navigate). But Ron said the goal is to cover al of North America with driverless freight trucks over the next five years.
Ron will remain chairman of Uber Freight, with Rebecca Tinucci, current head of Uber's electrification strategy and former Tesla charging business leader, taking over as CEO.
Ron grew Uber Freight to a $5 billion annual revenue business over the past decade, working with one-third of Fortune 500 shippers, according to the company, and managing close to $20 billion in freight overall for clients including Colgate, Nestle, and Anheuser-Busch InBev.
The ties between Ron and Waabi founder and CEO Raquel Urtasun (the two executives have known each other for a decade) — and between Waabi and Uber — are longstanding. Urtasun worked at Uber in an advanced technology unit before founding Waabi. Uber is a major investor in her company, and Uber Freight has been a key partner in testing Waabi's autonomous trucking technology on the roads, with a program underway in Texas since 2023 and an existing goals of deploying across billions of miles. Commercial loads are currently carrier by Waabi trucks between Dallas and Houston.
"Over the last four years, we've focused on the product development and R&D, and now we're entering the commercialization phase," said Urtasun, who added that Ron will be focused on the "go-to-market strategy, foundational partnerships such as Uber Freight that push the company to the next level, new partnerships, and positioning the business to scale.
Waabi ranked No. 35 on this year's CNBC Disruptor 50 list.
Currently, Waabi's approach has included drivers in the cabs as part of its testing phase. But Ron said by the end of the year, there will be no driver on board the vehicles. "It has been four years since Waabi's inception and it's go time," he said. "We start with specific routes and scale fast across multiple customers," he said, including Uber Freight.
Truck OEMs, such as Volvo (with which Waabi already has a deal) are already making the investments, "gearing up and leaning all in," Ron said. Now, he added, "It's about the people who buy the trucks."
Ron expects a relatively fast adoption cycle — among both logistics firms looking to replenish freight fleets and shippers, such as major retailers, with their own trucking assets and operations. Current constraints in the freight trucking sector will serve as tailwinds to adoption, he said. Traditional freight trucks can move cargo seven to eight hours a day, with autonomous trucks able to more than double that with the costs associated with a driver, and with a better safety profile and greater fuel efficiency.
In five years time, Ron says, driverless freight trucks will be "a common site across the U.S. in the supply chain, and especially in the Sunbelt corridors."
While much of the public focus with self-driving remains on the novelty of Waymos and Tesla robotaxis (Texas and Arizona are key test markets for these companies as well), the Waabi executives say the costs in the freight trucking industry make a much stronger case for the deployment at scale.
"Costs always come down with scale," Ron said, and he contends that autonomous freight will allow customers to recoup their investment "faster than any other investment in a trucking fleet."
For truck drivers, the jobs won't disappear overnight, and with an average age of a truck driver in the U.S. around 55, according to Ron, the next decade will provide the time for those already in the career to remain in their jobs. The Waabi executives do expect more driving jobs in the future to be within last-mile delivery, which is a more complex task for autonomous systems to master, and for their to be emergence of new technician jobs related to autonomous freight operations.
They also noted that there is a longstanding shortage of truck drivers in the U.S., a sign that long haul is not a highly sought career option. "No one wants to be a long haul trucker," said Urtasun. "This is not something humans should be doing, but as the labor shifts it will done over a period of time, so not a massive disruption," she added.
Self-driving regulation is still primarily handled at the state level, one reason Texas has featured in Waabi's early days, but Urtasun said a recent meeting she attended with Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy indicated a "willingness to get a federal framework to enable a faster, more simple path to commercialize this technology."
"All the benefits are clear and the U.S. wants to maintain the leadership position here, and this administration wants to double down in making that possible, but it does remain state-by-state policy," she said.
Waabi refers to itself as a "physical AI" company, with the ultimate goal of having its systems deployed beyond trucks, whether in robotaxis, warehouse robots or humanoid robots. "It's clear to us that at the right time we will do more than trucks," Urtasun said.
But the goal right now, she said, is to build the autonomous trucking business to scale and grow the revenue stream upon commercialization. There are no current plans to pursue an initial public offering. "Lots of people are courting Waabi for our next series, but our capital efficiency enables us to not need to raise capital. We don't have plans now to IPO," she said. "The first mission is to bring the solution to market," she added.
In addition, to Uber, Waabi is backed by Khosla Ventures, Nvidia, Volvo Group Venture Capital, and Porsche Automobil, among others.