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Nuro is allowed to launch commercial driverless services on public roads in California. What’s more, it is the first company to have such an allowance. Many companies are allowed to test their autonomous technology on public roads with a human driver on board, few can do it without the driver. The so-called Autonomous Vehicle Deployment permit will allow Nuro to operate commercial services in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. Nuro vehicles could go with speeds up to 25MPH on roads with a speed limit lower than 35 MPH
Nuro is a company working on driverless deliveries. Even though they have created 2 generations of driverless delivery vehicles -R1 and R2 – they will start commercial deliveries with Toyota Priuses. Nuro’s chief legal and policy officer David Estrada later added that they will eventually transition to its purpose-built R2 delivery bots for its commercial service as well as add more partners and expand geographically. I’m guessing that it is more expensive to manufacture a few R2s than to adapt a few Priuses. However, as they expand, there will be a possibility to mass manufacture the R2 and I hope we’ll all get to see them on the roads.
We all have seen driverless delivery as part of the future. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, we need this now. Up until yesterday, there were only 5 companies that could test their autonomic cars without a backup human driver, they weren’t allowed to earn any money directly using this technology. This indicates how strict the rules are regarding autonomous vehicles. I think the Autonomous Vehicle Deployment permit wouldn’t be granted if it wasn’t for the pandemic. A driverless delivery would make our lives easier (or at least cheaper) even without a pandemic. During one it could literally be a live saver.
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Whatever the reason is it is a great piece of information for Nuro. They will no longer pay for the testing, they will earn while doing it. It is just as exciting for the customers as it is for Nuro. We’ll get cheaper deliveries and see the first-ever commercial implementation of fully autonomous driving technology in the world.
I have a believe that Nuro deliveries will be successful, and that their implementation will speed up the implementation of driverless passenger cars. It’s another brilliant improvement that would both make our lives easier at the same time limiting the congestion and pollution. Even though I love driving I look forward to living in a world where we commute in autonomous vehicles. I’ll be more than happy to be limited just to driving on tracks for leisure.
I really like such a technology, however, I see, that this vehicle is a bit small, thus I’m curious about price of delivery, because if you live in Abigails family, you can easily fill it with foos, thus it takes one ride there and back to deliver food. Second thing is competition with amazon and their delivery, because, obviously, they have much more money. My opinion is that they should make it a bit bigger to have ability to compete with other enterprises.