The 18-wheeler merging on to Interstate 10 near Katy in mid-July probably didn’t look too out of the ordinary to nearby motorists, but if any had happened to look up, they would have noticed the cab was empty.

The truck belonged to Houston-based Bot Auto, which announced Sept. 16 that the run was part of the company’s internal validation for its autonomous trucking technology. Unlike other companies, Bot Auto has been intentional about describing the test as “humanless,” or without a safety driver in the cab.

“The end goal is providing transportation-as-a-service, and we are still a few years away from profitability,” Robert Brown, vice president of business development for Bot Auto, said in an interview with the Houston Business Journal. “But we’ve made incredible strides, and it was a really fun moment for that video to go public and let everyone take a victory lap."

The test follows Bot Auto closing $20 million in seed funding last year, led by investments from Brightway Future Capital, Cherubic Ventures, EnvisionX Capital, First Star Ventures, Linear Capital, M31 Capital, Taihill Venture, Uphonest Capital, and Welight Capital. Brown told the HBJ that the company is planning a Series A round soon.

The company has also recorded some commercial activity, tapping San Antonio-based door supplier Steves & Sons Inc. in July for a pilot through a partnership with managed logistics provider J.B. Hunt. Brown said the long-term vision is to add partners who want to ship along the I-10 corridor to San Antonio, but the company, which currently has eight trucks and fewer than 80 employees, is limited by its capacity for now.

Bot Auto is not a manufacturer of autonomous trucks. Instead, the company retrofits existing vehicles like the Freightliner Cascadia with an array of sensors including cameras, radar, and light detection and ranging — commonly called lidar.

After completing this validation run, the next milestone is a full commercial deployment of the technology between Houston and San Antonio, Brown said.

The key metric that Bot Auto is striving to meet is “cost per mile,” a framework developed by Boston Consulting Group. While Bot Auto’s data was not immediately available, Brown said the company is ahead of its autonomous competitors.

The key for widespread autonomous trucking, though, is when cost per mile becomes cheaper than human-operated trucks, which typically cost $2.25 to $2.50 per mile.

“We’re getting close to (under) $4 per mile, and that’s with a safety driver,” Brown said. “Once we remove that fallback safety driver, that's when we start getting competitive with human freight, and that's when it's going to get interesting from a business perspective.”

Other trucking companies that have established Houston presences include Pittsburgh-based Aurora Innovation Inc. (Nasdaq: AUR) and California-based Kodiak Robotics.

Autonomous trucks rolling out as Texas enacts new regulations

Brown described Texas as a “mecca” for autonomous trucking, due to freight routes like the I-10 and Interstate 45 corridors, and the state’s favorable regulatory environment. Now, though, the state is set to keep a closer eye on companies pioneering driverless technology, thanks to Senate Bill 2807, which went into effect in September.

Brown welcomed the legislation, however, saying the Texas Legislature worked “hand in glove” with the Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association on the bill.

“It’s something that industry appreciates, too, because we understand that average citizens might not know the difference between companies,” Brown said. “We want the public to feel safe. That bill’s been worked on by industry, by all the different stakeholders … the Department of Motor Vehicles, Texas Department of Safety.

"So we’re quite excited about that.”

SB 2807 likely will not be enforced until the spring, but it does require autonomous vehicle companies to create first responder plans so that emergency services departments know how to interact with such vehicles.

Bot Auto has already developed such plans, Brown said. The company has a video on its YouTube channel showcasing interactions between Bot Auto trucks and Texas Department of Safety troopers, and the validation run in July also shows the truck allowing a fire truck with lights on to pass.

The state's Transportation Code prevents political subdivisions like cities from enacting laws regulating autonomous technology. Last year, the city of Houston had an informal working group after General Motors-backed startup Cruise briefly resumed operating on city streets, the HBJ previously reported.

Bot Auto was founded by Xiaodi Hou, the former founder of trucking software company TuSimple. The company’s headquarters is listed on its website as 15310 Park Row Blvd. near the Energy Corridor.