Self-driving startups

While the global manufacturers like Ford, Volvo and Mercedes are continue to work on their plans for autonomous delivery vehicles and cars, two California-based startups have been promoting their own ambitious offerings this week.

Today (30 January), Nuro has announced that it has secured $92m in Series A funding to develop its fully autonomous vehicle.

The company’s founder Dave Ferguson and Jiajun Zhu were previously Principal Engineers at Google’s self-driving car project (now Waymo). What distinguishes the Nuro from the myriad of other autonomous vehicles on the market is that it is designed specifically for local goods transportation – there are four cargo compartments, and no space allocated to a driver or passengers.  Arguably, this is a USP and therefore a strength – but it could make it more difficult for Nuro to organize tests on public roads in states/countries where the authorities insist on having safety drivers on hand.

Meanwhile, another Californian operation – the Burlingame-based udeliv – is also promoting its own autonomous last mile delivery vehicle. In a notice posted on its linkedin page over the past few days, udeliv said it will “make history by hosting the world’s first public-road autonomous delivery test in San Mateo, Calif., from the local Draeger’s Market at a private event to be held within the next few weeks”.

udeliv added: “In compliance with existing California regulations, the vehicle will be supervised by a safety driver and in test mode.”

Led by CEO Daniel Laury and CTO Akshat Patel, former Tesla and Apple engineering team member, udelv is listed on the California DMV Autonomous Vehicle Tester Program under the name of CarOne LLC. The company said that its goal is to “test dozens of udelv vehicles on the roads in a few states within a short timeframe”.