More Uber Eats clients would have their purchases delivered directly from the trucks themselves, without the assistance of any delivery workers. This is due to the fact that Uber has entered into a deal with Nuro for a period of ten years to deploy Nuro’s driverless electric cars to transport food orders inside the United States. In the fall of this year, they will start offering their service in Houston, Texas, and Mountain View, California. Eventually, they will also offer it in the rest of the Bay Area.
When customers make a purchase, according to TechCrunch, they won’t be able to choose whether or not their order is being delivered by a Nuro bot, and they won’t even be able to tell if it is. That also indicates that consumers will be charged the same fees for delivery no matter what form of delivery they choose to choose. Additionally, if users opt to tip through the app and a Nuro vehicle rather than a human worker arrives, they will get a reimbursement for the amount of the tip they gave. However, in order to collect their order, they need to step outdoors, which might prove to be extremely inconvenient if it starts to rain.
According to the video that was provided by the firms to demonstrate what a Nuro delivery would look like, clients would be required to type in a code in order to unlock the car door and retrieve their purchase. At the beginning of this year, Nuro debuted its third generation of delivery vehicles, each of which is equipped with an exterior airbag designed to protect pedestrians. Because it has not yet made its new vehicle model available to the public in an official capacity, for the time being, the cooperation will make use of the company’s R2 second-generation automobiles. The R2 was made to be completely self-driving. It has thermal and 360-degree cameras, lidar, and radar so that it can get around roads on its own without a human driver.
Since 2019, cars owned and operated by Nuro have begun providing delivery services to various businesses in Houston, including Walmart. It was given the first Driverless Car Deployment Permit in the state of California in 2020, which gave it the authorization to run a commercial autonomous vehicle service. This occurred in the state of California. According to TechCrunch, this would make it possible for Nuro to collect a charge for each and every Uber Eats delivery made inside the state.
There are other autonomous delivery companies than Nuro with whom Uber Eats has a partnership arrangement. The meal delivery service started a test programme with Motional in May, and it is already accepting orders in Santa Monica, California. However, even though the deliveries will be handled by autonomous vehicles, there will still be a safety driver behind the wheel. During the same month, Uber Eats also started a test run of a service in collaboration with a sidewalk delivery company called Serve Robotics in West Hollywood. This service was designed for shorter delivery routes.
