Kodiak hands Atlas the first 2 of 65 Western Star driverless trucks, with 63 due by mid-2027

Kodiak AI said on Nov. 3 that in September it delivered the first two Western Star 49X trucks equipped with the Kodiak Driver to Atlas Energy Solutions, which uses them to haul proppant in the Permian Basin. That brings Atlas's owned-and-operated driverless fleet to 37 trucks, which Kodiak calls the largest of its kind in the world.

The two trucks matter less than the ones still owed. They are the first of 65 Western Stars in Atlas's initial 100-truck order, and Kodiak says it is on track to finish that order in the first half of 2027. If it closes by June 30, that is 63 trucks in under eight months, about eight a month, after two arrived in September. The platform is Kodiak's answer. Built by Daimler Truck North America for heavy-duty work, the 49X is the first vehicle to carry Kodiak's seventh-generation hardware, which the company says has nearly 50% more compute than Gen6. The release lists the retrofitting of Kodiak's vehicles by third parties among the company's risks; one truckmaker's platform shrinks that dependence.

"Uptime is everything in our operation, so reliability and performance are what we look for in every truck," Atlas CEO John Turner said. A Gen6 Kodiak truck ran 64 consecutive days without downtime this summer. The two companies have begun limited service on public county roads, and Kodiak expects wider use of public roads in mid-2027, once safety requirements are met. That puts both deadlines in the same half-year.