6 ms·

Surprised how critical comments are...IMO autonomous delivery vehicles are much more likely to go to market sooner than autonomous taxis for the simple reason t

Surprised how critical comments are...IMO autonomous delivery vehicles are much more likely to go to market sooner than autonomous taxis for the simple reason that the barriers to getting regulatory approval are going to be much lower because you aren't dealing with human lives. At the same time, food, grocery, and same day delivery are becoming more popular.

DGAP 8y ago
They'd only work for campuses, with elevators in all the dorms.
- dawhizkid 8y ago
  Why is that? I thought they drive on roads?
nopriorarrests 8y ago
>you aren't dealing with human lives except pedestrians and other drivers. so, in fact you do.
- dawhizkid 8y ago
  Not to the same degree. And given how much smaller these things are than a passenger car or SUV even in the event of a crash, regardless who is at fault, I would be very surprised if the other car involved would sustain enough damage to be life-threatening. If I were Nuro, and if it isn't already factored into the design, I would purposefully design the vehicle so that the Nuro would be squished and minimize likelihood any other vehicle involved in a crash would sustain too much damage.
  - pjbk 8y ago
    > Not to the same degree. Yes, in the same degree. It is a street vehicle. They even published their safety manifesto some months ago: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/57bcb0e02994ca36c2ee746c/t/5b9a00848a922d8eaecf65a2/1536819358607/delivering_safety_nuros_approach.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/57bcb0e02994ca36c2ee7... However you may meet standards and regulations, and pass all certifications, but the issues about autonomous vehicles present big unknowns. We already have accidents and fatalities related to use or misuse of UAVs. Even small sidewalk delivery vehicles may injure or kill a baby in a stroller because of incorrect detection or malfunction, or start a major accident when other drivers need to swerve to avoid them because they entered a road or stopped without notice. Nuro is testing in Arizona like other self-driving vehicles companies. Some people are getting increasingly annoyed dealing with their behaviors and have started retaliating. With Waymo's cars, for example: https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/tech/2018/12/11/waymo-self-driving-vehicles-face-harassment-road-rage-phoenix-area/2198220002/ https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/tech/2018/12/...
  - muzz 8y ago
    If they are limited to 25 mph, how can they travel on most roads?
mb_72 8y ago
Starship Technologies has been going at this for ~5 years already, and I feel extremely skeptical about this entire 'autonomous last mile delivery' thing. Home delivery is a solved problem; we pay a few EUR for it and a human turns up in their car, plus there's no need to have a valuable 10k EUR robot delivering a 5EUR pizza. For packages, there's three different package locker systems within 10 minutes walk of our house. To access any robot we'd need to go to the front of our apartment building anyway. I guess I must really be missing the point of all this, as a bunch of people seem to want to throw a lot of money and effort at the 'problem'.
- dawhizkid 8y ago
  No offense, but yes you are missing the point. The whole value of autonomous taxis or autonomous delivery robots is that it eliminates the most expensive thing about the business model of Uber/Lyft/Instacart/etc: labor. Once you create a taxi or delivery service where you have no labor cost, then your unit economics greatly improve and you have a killer business. If you have a $10 Uber ride, ~$7.50 or so of that goes to the driver with $2.50 to Uber. With an autonomous taxi model Uber could theoretically halve fares, in this case to $5, and take in the entire $5 for themselves.
  - mb_72 8y ago
    Please try and convince me that someone operating a fleet of delivery robots that costs many thousands of euros each is going to be 'cheaper' than utilising the current model of people + their own cars. Where I live (Estonia), delivery adds a few euros to the cost of food (for example). Even if that was reduced to a single euro that wouldn't make any difference to if we ordered food to home or not.
  - tdhoot 8y ago
    That $7.50 pays to cover capital costs (the car). Uber would have to also pay for that out of their share. The general point is that the savings might not be enough to offset the higher capital costs from autonomous vehicles + development spend.
- anonymous5133 8y ago

DGAP 8y ago

They'd only work for campuses, with elevators in all the dorms.

dawhizkid 8y ago
Why is that? I thought they drive on roads?

nopriorarrests 8y ago

>you aren't dealing with human lives except pedestrians and other drivers. so, in fact you do.

dawhizkid 8y ago
Not to the same degree. And given how much smaller these things are than a passenger car or SUV even in the event of a crash, regardless who is at fault, I would be very surprised if the other car involved would sustain enough damage to be life-threatening. If I were Nuro, and if it isn't already factored into the design, I would purposefully design the vehicle so that the Nuro would be squished and minimize likelihood any other vehicle involved in a crash would sustain too much damage.
- pjbk 8y ago
  > Not to the same degree. Yes, in the same degree. It is a street vehicle. They even published their safety manifesto some months ago: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/57bcb0e02994ca36c2ee746c/t/5b9a00848a922d8eaecf65a2/1536819358607/delivering_safety_nuros_approach.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/57bcb0e02994ca36c2ee7... However you may meet standards and regulations, and pass all certifications, but the issues about autonomous vehicles present big unknowns. We already have accidents and fatalities related to use or misuse of UAVs. Even small sidewalk delivery vehicles may injure or kill a baby in a stroller because of incorrect detection or malfunction, or start a major accident when other drivers need to swerve to avoid them because they entered a road or stopped without notice. Nuro is testing in Arizona like other self-driving vehicles companies. Some people are getting increasingly annoyed dealing with their behaviors and have started retaliating. With Waymo's cars, for example: https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/tech/2018/12/11/waymo-self-driving-vehicles-face-harassment-road-rage-phoenix-area/2198220002/ https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/tech/2018/12/...
- muzz 8y ago
  If they are limited to 25 mph, how can they travel on most roads?

mb_72 8y ago

Starship Technologies has been going at this for ~5 years already, and I feel extremely skeptical about this entire 'autonomous last mile delivery' thing. Home delivery is a solved problem; we pay a few EUR for it and a human turns up in their car, plus there's no need to have a valuable 10k EUR robot delivering a 5EUR pizza. For packages, there's three different package locker systems within 10 minutes walk of our house. To access any robot we'd need to go to the front of our apartment building anyway. I guess I must really be missing the point of all this, as a bunch of people seem to want to throw a lot of money and effort at the 'problem'.

dawhizkid 8y ago
No offense, but yes you are missing the point. The whole value of autonomous taxis or autonomous delivery robots is that it eliminates the most expensive thing about the business model of Uber/Lyft/Instacart/etc: labor. Once you create a taxi or delivery service where you have no labor cost, then your unit economics greatly improve and you have a killer business. If you have a $10 Uber ride, ~$7.50 or so of that goes to the driver with $2.50 to Uber. With an autonomous taxi model Uber could theoretically halve fares, in this case to $5, and take in the entire $5 for themselves.
- mb_72 8y ago
  Please try and convince me that someone operating a fleet of delivery robots that costs many thousands of euros each is going to be 'cheaper' than utilising the current model of people + their own cars. Where I live (Estonia), delivery adds a few euros to the cost of food (for example). Even if that was reduced to a single euro that wouldn't make any difference to if we ordered food to home or not.
- tdhoot 8y ago
  That $7.50 pays to cover capital costs (the car). Uber would have to also pay for that out of their share. The general point is that the savings might not be enough to offset the higher capital costs from autonomous vehicles + development spend.
anonymous5133 8y ago