AVs to Deliver Arizonans’ Last-Minute Xmas Treats

Greg Hyde

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21st December 2018

An autonomous vehicle start-up’s grocery delivery pilot program is being expanded to operate fully driverless vehicles just in time for Christmas.

Since August, Nuro has partnered with a branch of Kroger subsidiary Fry’s in Scottsdale, Arizona for the delivery of groceries by autonomous vehicles accompanied by human back-up drivers. The companies now claim the program’s been sufficiently successful for them to deploy a fleet of robot Santa cars with no humans inside that can deliver groceries to the city’s inhabitants.

These new AVs are called R1s. Nuro says it has been developing them since 2016 and they will travel on public highways. Its president Dave Ferguson said they would help enable “a world without errands, where everything is on-demand and can be delivered affordably”.

Kroger chief digital officer Yael Cosset claimed: “Our autonomous delivery pilot with Nuro over the past few months continues to prove the benefit of the flexible and reliable technology … [it] offers our customers anything, anytime, and anywhere”.