Texas is a major hub for driverless trucking startups, with Aurora launching its self-driving trucking service in May 2025 and Kodiak planning to launch its own driverless trucks in the state in 2026. One of the earliest startups in the space was TuSimple, which shuttered its U.S. business in 2023 and moved its operations to China. TuSimple co-founder Dr. Xiaodi Hou left the company shortly before the U.S. operations were closed, and subsequently founded a new startup. It shared the same goal as its predecessor — to develop level 4 autonomous trucks that could cover long distances on American roads without the need for human intervention. The new company, Bot Auto, recently announced that it had moved a step closer to that goal, completing a humanless validation run in Houston.
Traditionally, self-driving trucks have either been run with a human in the driver’s seat in case of emergency, or featured some way for a remote operator to take control. However, Bot Auto’s truck did not have a backup operator at all. It’s a notable achievement for a company that has only been around for a couple of years, but the startup still has a long way to go to commercialize the technology. Hou said in a news release,