Mountain View residents can now get convenience store items delivered to them by self-driving vehicles.
Autonomous cars powered by technology from Nuro Inc. have begun making delivery runs for a 7-Eleven store in the South Bay city, the companies announced Wednesday. The partners are testing the service with a store located near Nuro's Mountain View headquarters, but if all goes well, they will be expanding far beyond that, said Cosimo Leopold, head of partnerships for Nuro.
"The hope and the vision is that we do far more than one or two or ten stores," Leopold told the Business Journal.
Starting Wednesday, Mountain View residents can order everything from powdered donuts to cheese-flavored chips using 7-Eleven's 7NOW delivery app and have them delivered via autonomous vehicle to the curb outside their home. For now, the automated deliveries are only being made from the store at 1905 Latham Street, just north of El Camino Real.
And for the time being, Nuro will make the deliveries with Toyota Priuses equipped with its self-driving technology. Customers will have to get their orders out of the car. Nuro plans to eventually make the deliveries with R2, its custom-designed unmanned autonomous delivery vehicle.
Despite the modest start to the partnership, the deal is significant in that it marks the first time a commercial service has made deliveries in California using autonomous vehicles, Leopold said. Nuro has previously teamed up with companies including Dominos Pizza Inc. (NYSE:DPZ) and Walmart Inc. (NYSE:WMT) to deliver pizzas and other items in Phoenix and Houston.
If it works out, the 7-Eleven deal could have a huge payoff down the line for Nuro. The convenience store chain has about 77,000 outlets around the world, including around 16,000 in the U.S. The partners haven't yet determined when they'll expand automated delivery service to other stores or which ones will be next, Leopold said.
Nuro is still testing its service
Regardless, in the near term, the deal allows Nuro to test its service in another market and to figure out how to commercialize it, he said.
"One of the things we're hoping to learn from this is: How do people like (autonomous) delivery in California?" Leopold said. "Is it different from what we've seen in Houston?"
Nuro has already discovered that people are actually OK with having their goods and food delivered by a robotic vehicle, rather than by a person, Leopold said. Among other things, customers appreciate not feeling like they have to give a tip, he said.
"Surprisingly, a lot of people don't want to interact with other people," Leopold said. "They like the privacy."
One of the factors that has inhibited people from using delivery services in the past is cost. Delivery charges can add a significant amount to orders, and people sometimes order lots of items to justify those fees.
Nuro has the potential to change that dynamic, bringing down the cost so that it's affordable for customers and retailers to have only one or two items delivered at a time, Leopold said.
"When that delivery costs a handful of dollars, if it costs anything at all, then suddenly you could get whatever you want," he said. "My dream is I wake up in the future, and I need milk, and I order milk and five minutes later it's at my door. And I didn't pay $39.99 for it."
