Future of Driverless Deliveries Depends on Large Auto Makers
May 22 2019 - 12:50PM
Dow Jones News
By Kelsey Gee
Replacing the milkman for good will require car manufacturers
like Ford Motor Co. and Tesla Inc. to help build tiny self-driving
delivery robots, said Dave Ferguson, co-founder and president of
robotics company Nuro.
The autonomous vehicles that Nuro currently makes, which look
like large coolers, aim to solve what many in the supply-chain and
logistics industry refer to as the "last mile" problem, Mr.
Ferguson said on Wednesday at The Wall Street Journal's Future of
Everything Festival. Getting groceries, dry cleaning and other
goods to the front steps of consumers' homes and apartments today
typically requires an expensive fleet of couriers with companies
like Amazon.com Inc. and United Parcel Service Inc.
Fast-food chains and grocery stores are partnering with vehicle
makers and startups like Mountain View, Calif.-based Nuro to try to
replace these mail and package carriers and to better compete with
companies like Amazon, which offers free one-day shipping for its
Prime members.
But replacing all of those delivery workers with autonomous
machines, for now, is still more expensive than startups like Nuro
can achieve on their own, without the help of larger car makers,
said Mr. Ferguson.
"We have the humility to realize that building vehicles is
incredibly hard," he said.
Offering grocery-delivery services to all Americans won't be
sustainable unless companies like his can keep prices low for
customers, he said, which will require an army of mass-produced
machines. "If we're able to build this future, it's going to
require a lot of vehicles."
He expects the machines to be fully-electric, rather than
relying on fossil fuels, and said they would need to be less
awkward and clumsy than many of the current prototypes being tested
in cities like Scottsdale, Ariz. There, Nuro has partnered with
America's biggest supermarket chain by sales and stores, Kroger
Co., to offer shoppers grocery delivery with their machines for
$5.95 per order, but the vehicles are still slow-moving and run at
speeds that top out at 25 miles an hour.
"I think one of the complaints that's often leveled at
self-driving vehicles is they drive like my grandparents," he said.
"That's really annoying if you're inside the Uber driving around.
It's great if you're the parents of kids running around the
neighborhood."
Toyota Motor Corp. in 2018 unveiled a prototype podlike
autonomous delivery vehicle and is working with Yum Brands Inc.'s
Pizza Hut. Mercedes-Benz parent Daimler AG is also developing its
own autonomous-delivery vehicles.
One thing Nuro and other robotics makers have going for them is
the relative simplicity of designing a miniature-sized machine that
doesn't need to carry any human beings, who tend to be more
sensitive to bumpy road conditions and other safety issues than
boxes of laundry detergent would be.
"We can drive along narrow roads with parked cars like in
Manhattan," unlike bigger, and potentially more dangerous passenger
vehicles making food-delivery runs today, said Mr. Ferguson. "That
is an enormous advantage."
Write to Kelsey Gee at kelsey.gee@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 22, 2019 12:35 ET (16:35 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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