Uber Freight, Aurora reveal driverless trucking partnership

Piper Sandler analysts reiterated their Overweight rating on Uber (UBER), raising its price target by $2 per share. This call comes after Uber Freight announced a multi-year deal with self-driving developer Aurora Innovation (AUR).

Catalysts Anchors Madison Mills and Seana Smith weigh in on Uber's price movement in the morning session after expanding its autonomous driving partnership with Aurora.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Catalysts.

This post was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.

Video transcript

Uber is also getting a bullish call this morning from Piper Sandler.

The firm reiterating its overweight rating on the stock raising the price target from 86 to $88.

They say Uber is a sleeping giant and this comes aside some additional big news for Uber also expanding its deal with aora innovation that is in an effort to haul freight autonomously and expect that to be coming in later this year.

Now, Sean, it's interesting because these were kind of former rivals in the space.

So interesting to see them attempting to have this fully autonomous freight travel.

This would be the first fully autonomous truck offering from both of these companies.

Again, driverless truck offerings from Uber and Aurora.

These rivals coming together to potentially push forward the self driving trucks again, they're saying that could come later this year.

Sometimes those announcements end up having delays, but that's what the companies are saying right now for their potential timeline.

And this also coming after Uber had sold off autonomous vehicle unit to Aurora back in 2020 they'd spent a billion dollars on it.

Now restarting that relationship here, Shana.

Yeah.

And in a recent interview here with Uber's uh freight head of autonomous trucking, making some interesting comments when it comes to pricing, saying that Uber doesn't plan to lower freight prices on the route despite going driverless.

Also saying that Uber had picked aurora partly due to its safety record, obviously a huge focal point and and top priority here for so many of these companies as we talk about this shift here to a driver list.

Now going forward saying that no injuries were reported in the seven incidents a recorded since 2021.

And also the fact that this deal really underscores Uber shift from developing its own self driving car to the more cost effective option of opening its platform to other companies.

It's something that some analysts have talked about in the past, just what exactly that opportunity looks like going forward.

So again, this deal here between Uber and Aurora is really what seems to be driving the stock at least today.