For the last few years, self-driving car is an exciting new technology. Many car manufacturers and interested companies such as Tesla, GM and Google raced to be the first one to perfect and roll out the technology. The most talk about purpose for this technology seem to be that it will change the passenger transportation industry. Now that the technology is possible, delivery service industry is one of the first to rapidly adopt it into their fleet of delivery vehicles.
What make unmanned vehicles so attractive to the delivery service is that the number of digital sales jump rapidly in the last quarter. With unmanned vehicles, customers can receive their grocery orders at anytime and anywhere. All they need to do is to place their orders online and wait for the autonomous vehicles to drive to their doors. This also appealing to the manufacturers as this early adoption can provide learning data for better self-driving vehicles.
While I understand the hype for autonomous passenger car, I feel that unmanned vehicle is better suited for delivery industry. This technology can compete with delivery drone. With the drone, the delivery company need to have many drone stations as the drone can only cover so much ground with its limited battery. The unmanned vehicles however solve that problem because they have the same fuel capacity as a regular car with the autonomous feature. They can cover more ground than the drone without needing rest time like regular delivery service which mean less delivery time.
Sources:
https://www.supermarketnews.com/online-retail/kroger-goes-live-self-driving-delivery-vehicles
https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/04/tech/gm-cruise-doordash/index.html
Brendon Lee says
Wow! I think this is definitely an interesting use of autonomous vehicles and definitely something I would put stock in. I think this is a good idea because it addresses the issue of “Where would the autonomous vehicles be parked?” There definitely isn’t enough parking spots and one proposed solution was to have the vehicles circle around endlessly while waiting for the owner. With this proposed delivery idea, vehicles can always be in use. I love the point about using this a learning experience and using this to gather data. I also think this is a good idea because it takes pressure off of companies to immediately make a perfect self-driving vehicle. One concern was the safety of passengers and I feel like the stakes are definitely a lot lower when you’re only delivering food. Interesting idea for sure and I would like to see where car companies can go with autonomous vehicles.