This article appeared originally as part of the Road to Autonomy weekly newsletter by Grayson Brulte. Brulte was onsite for this delivery and interviewed Bot Auto leadership for his podcast.

This week, Bot Auto pulled the driver and launched commercial fully autonomous operations with Ryan Transportation from Houston to Dallas on a 231-mile lane, and we were there to witness the moment firsthand.

Before the truck launched, we took a peek inside to see if there was anyone in the cab, and there was not. Not a single person. Moments later, the truck took off from a dusty truck park in northeast Houston bound for Dallas.

Before the launch, we spent time speaking with the team and traditional truck drivers to get a sense of what the journey would be like, and we have to tell you, being a truck driver is a hard job. We left late in the evening and drove through the night to Dallas with our cameras in tow.

While you might think driving at night is easier with less traffic, it was the complete opposite, even given the fact that traffic was a bit lighter in certain parts of the journey. There were lane closures due to construction, aggressive drivers, and a motorcycle that decided to pass in the breakdown lane as the truck was autonomously driving over a high flyover ramp as part of the Beltway 8 and I-45 North interchange.

The flyover ramps in this interchange are some of the highest and longest in Houston. While the motorcycle drove like a bat out of hell, the Bot Auto truck simply moved over a bit to allow the motorcycle to zoom down the road.

The truck did not flinch and did not get distracted, the same way a human driver might. What we witnessed would have caused us to flinch, as the noise was extremely loud and we had no idea what move the motorcycle would make next or what side of the ramp it would go to next. But the truck kept on autonomously trucking all the way to Dallas without any interventions.

And that is just one of the many interesting driving moments that we witnessed as we followed the truck on its journey from Houston to Dallas.

These moments and more will be released as a Field Report on Tuesday complete with an on-the-ground video from what we experienced as we witnessed Bot Auto make history.

Our Take: Being able to witness moments such as this one is both a privilege and an honor. We are fortunate to have a front-row seat to the emerging autonomy economy and bring it to you each and every week through our platform.

At The Road to Autonomy, we do not regurgitate headlines and talk in PR speak. We give you our honest opinions on what we read and see, and what we witnessed with Bot Auto on that journey was real. No human in the cab, no interventions, just a truck driving fully autonomously up to Dallas.