Backbone is the virtual depot control layer for the autonomous mile: the platform that orchestrates the network of depots and services an AV fleet needs to scale.
Ninety seconds on what happens to a fleet when the driver steps out, and what Backbone puts in their place.
The driver is gone. The charging, cleaning, inspection, staging, and recovery the driver used to absorb did not go anywhere. Today that work is people, spreadsheets, and phone calls inside a depot the fleet outgrows the moment it scales. Chargers must come online. Space must be found. Providers must be held to a standard. This is the ground game, and it decides how far a fleet can go.
Backbone engineers embed in your depot and map how your operation actually runs: layouts, workflows, hardware, the lot. Delivered through software, not sold as software. In weeks, not quarters.
The machines and robots working inside the depot, and the wider network of depots and services around it: charging, cleaning, maintenance, recovery. One system, machine to machine.
Pulse holds every third-party provider to your SLA and routes vehicles across them; the providers execute and carry liability. The human share of operating cost falls as the depot goes lights-out, and the cost of running the fleet falls toward cents on the dollar.
Backbone does not own the depots, the vehicles, the chargers, or the vendors. It orchestrates across them, and market-makes the network.
Pulse reads what every operator already publishes, turns it into one live picture across fleets, and drives the depot toward lights-out. Backbone earns only on the in-service mile.
Machine to machine. Pulse tells the charger a vehicle is coming, tells the tow a vehicle has stalled, and tells a human only what needs a human. Queues are digital, handoffs are automatic, and nobody babysits a dashboard at 2am.
It decides and acts. Fleet management and telematics watch the operation. Pulse runs it: it sequences the depot floor, routes vehicles across the service network, and escalates on your SLA, not on someone noticing.
AV platforms push their operating partners to meet standards they cannot easily verify. Backbone standardizes the network and shows the operation, neutrally: cross-fleet visibility built from published events only. We never read the driver stack. We never share one operator's data with another.
How much of the operation still needs a person, falling as the depot goes lights-out. The single clearest measure of how far an operation has climbed.
How fast vehicles move through charge, clean, inspect, and stage, and back into service. Minutes in the depot are miles not driven.
The number the whole system answers to, compared across markets and managers, apples to apples.
You stop wondering whether an operator will be good. The network makes them good.
See and govern how every operator and market performs, without touching the driver stack. More of the fleet in revenue miles, at lower cost to run, in more markets.
Lights-out automation drives labor out of the depot, and the service network expands your capacity without new real estate. Onboard in weeks. Backbone earns when you transact.
Backbone was founded by the team that built and ran a 60K-vehicle mobility network across 22 markets, with leadership from Uber dispatch engineering and Waymo operations. We have run the depots, the vehicles, the chargers, and the balance sheet. That is why the product starts on the ground.
Scale autonomy from promise to infrastructure.
Backbone is what scales AV from promise to infrastructure.
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