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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

self-driving car

AutoX Eyes Expanded Restaurant Delivery for its Self-Driving Cars

AutoX, the startup that made a splash last year with its self-driving grocery delivery + mobile-commerce solution, expanded into the hot food delivery space, and is now working with 14 restaurants in the San Jose area.

When it launched its first pilot, AutoX caught our eye because the company wasn’t just making straight grocery deliveries. It also outfitted its self-driving cars with li’l mini-marts in the backseat of the vehicles, so people could make additional purchases on the spot.

AutoX quietly expanded into restaurant delivery about a month ago, and at the recent CES show in Las Vegas, its autonomous cars delivered food from Applebee’s to hungry press and attendees. According to Li, one of the reasons AutoX likes restaurant delivery is that it can easily make multiple deliveries, reducing the amount of time the car spends empty.

Autonomous car delivers burgers at CES

Another reason hot food is appealing is that when a driverless car arrives with your groceries, there is no driver to help you carry them in. Hauling heavy bags of groceries could be a problem for older people or those living many flights of stairs up. You don’t exactly have to lug a burger and fries.

That’s not to say AutoX is abandoning its grocery roots. Far from it. Li says that they will just adapt their platform accordingly. “We’re exploring how to better use our technology,” said Li, “Maybe we don’t deliver to apartment buildings for groceries, or we do some kind of reward for coming downstairs.”

Additionally, the company is bringing its self-driving technology to minivans, which would allow it to make multiple grocery deliveries along one route.

There is increased competition for AutoX, however, on all sides and in its own back yard. On the restaurant front, DoorDash recently started testing self-driving car deliveries in San Francisco. For groceries, Udelv uses autonomous delivery vans to deliver food from Farmstead. And elsewhere in the Bay Area, Robomart just announced a self-driving mobile commerce partnership with Stop & Shop.

AutoX, however, may wind up partnering with some of its competition down the road. Right now the AutoX app serves as the marketplace for users to place restaurant orders, but eventually, Li said, the company’s self-driving fleet could be a delivery option for customers on a different platform like Uber Eats or DoorDash.

AutoX is part of a larger automation trend disrupting and transforming the food industry. If you’re interested in how self-driving technology and other food robotics will shape the meal journey, be sure to attend out Articulate summit in San Francisco on April 16!.

Kroger Shifts Driverless Delivery Program into Higher Gear

Kroger announced today that it is ejecting humans from its autonomous delivery vehicle pilot, and going full-on, self-driving car with expanded availability.

Since August, the grocery retailer has been working with robotics company Nuro, testing grocery delivery via autonomous vehicles in Scottsdale, AZ. The initial test run completed close to one thousand deliveries. However, those were all done in self-driving Toyota Priuses, which still had a human in the car, presumably for safety reasons.

Today, Kroger is kicking the people to the curb and kicking the self-driving delivery into a higher gear as it adds Nuro’s autonomous R1. The R1 is a pod-looking vehicle that can only carry cargo with literally no place for a driver.

The two companies are calling this pilot expansion “the first-ever unmanned delivery service available to the general public,” which appears to be true, but it’s certainly not the only self-driving delivery service tests being run right now. Online grocer Farmstead has been running autonomous delivery in the Bay Area with Udelv. And in San Jose, CA, AutoX has been running its own driverless delivery test.

Kroger and Nuro’s approach is a little different as it lies somewhere between traditional delivery cars and the newer, smaller-scale rover-style robots. As noted earlier, the R1 is a completely unmanned vehicle and only transports goods. It travels at less than 25 miles per hour and is half the width of a regular car. This means it can be more nimble than a traditional full-size car when navigating traffic and pedestrians, but it also can’t travel as fast, limiting the delivery radius.

Kroger and Nuro are still in the midst of testing, and full autonomous delivery vehicles are still a ways off as the technology needs to improve and city and state regulations need to be developed to keep up with the technology. However, if you’re in the Scottsdale area, and want to experience a driverless vehicle pulling up to your house delivering your groceries, here’s how you can try it out:

Where: Fry’s Food Stores (single location): 7770 East McDowell Road, Scottsdale, AZ 85257
When: Customers can place delivery orders immediately, for delivery 7 days a week
How: Customers shop via frysfood.com or the Fry’s Food Stores mobile app and place their order based on slot availability
What: Grocery orders can be scheduled for same-day or next-day delivery by Nuro’s fleet of self-driving vehicles
Price: $5.95 flat fee; no minimum order

If you do order, let us know how it goes!

AutoX Accelerates Autonomous Grocery Delivery with New California Pilot Program

Self-driving car startup AutoX announced today that it launched its first pilot of autonomous grocery delivery in San Jose, CA (h/t TechCrunch). AutoX’s move follows Kroger’s self-driving grocery delivery pilot launch in Phoenix earlier this month, signaling that autonomous grocery delivery might be commonplace before we know it.

For its San Jose pilot, AutoX partnered with fellow Bay Area companies GrubMarket, which is a B2B supplier of produce, and DeMartini Orchard, a Los Altos-based produce market. For now, AutoX’s grocery delivery is open to customers in geo-fenced areas of San Jose, and will be gradually expanding “every few weeks.”

What makes AutoX’s delivery program a little different from other grocery home delivery coming to market is that you can order groceries for delivery ahead of time and purchase items that are stocked inside the car. That is: you can place an advance order for groceries through the AutoX app for next-day delivery, or you can have the car come to your house where you can choose from a selection of goods that are inside the car and pay for them on the spot. The specifics of payment for in-car goods, such as whether cars are equipped with Amazon Go-like functionality or use some system of sensors, is unclear from the reporting.

Image via Auto X

Additionally, it looks as though AutoX’s deliveries will truly be human-free. In the announcement blog post, AutoX wrote: “The groceries will be well-preserved in a temperature-controlled environment throughout their driverless ride over.” So there won’t be anyone to gripe at if your order’s wrong.

AutoX’s news comes on the same day that Toyota invested $500 million in Uber as part of a larger agreement between the two companies to work on driverless car technology. While that deal didn’t address food delivery via something like the fast-growing Uber Eats specifically, Toyota did unveil its “e-Palette” line of autonomous delivery vehicles at CES earlier this year. So this new investment could come with its own autonomous food delivery component.

The entire autonomous driving space is driving ahead so quickly that pretty soon I’m going to run out of car-related puns. As noted earlier, Kroger has started its self-driving grocer delivery pilot in Arizona. And elsewhere at CES this year, Ford announced a deal with Postmates for self-driving food delivery.

Founded in 2016, AutoX has offices in San Jose and China, and according to TechCrunch, the company has raised $43 million from strategic investors. If you’re in the right area in San Jose, snap and share with us a pic of the robot car. Even better, order some groceries and let us know how it goes.

Kroger and Nuro Launch First Pilot for Self-Driving Grocery Delivery Cars in Arizona

Starting today, if you shop at Fry’s Food Store onEast McDowell Road in Scottsdale, Arizona, you can get your groceries delivered via self-driving car.

This is the first such pilot to come from the previously announced partnership between Fry’s parent company, Kroger, and autonomous driving startup Nuro.

According to the press announcement, customers can shop via frysfood.com or the Fry’s Food Stores mobile app, and place their order based on available time slots. Grocery orders can be scheduled for same-day or next-day delivery by Nuro’s fleet of self-driving vehicles for a flat $5.95 fee with no minimum order.

The only bummer about this pilot is that for now, the two companies are using a self-driving Toyota Prius fleet — not the cute li’l R1 robot delivery pod/vehicles (seen in the picture above). The R1s will begin rolling out this fall. A Nuro spokesperson explained the Prius move, telling TechCrunch “The Priuses share many software and hardware systems with the R1 custom vehicle, so while we compete final certification and testing of the R1, the Prius will begin delivering groceries and help us improve the overall service and customer experience.”

What’s not spelled out in the press release is the role of humans in this pilot. As these are tests to learn about consumers’ acceptance of autonomous vehicles for delivery, I assume that there will be a human in the car for safety reasons. But is that a Kroger or a Nuro person? And will they bring the groceries in or just sit in the car while people come out to pick up their food? The R1s don’t have drivers, so those will presumably present an entirely different experience for the customer when those roll out.

Regardless, this self-driving delivery pilot is among the many tech moves Kroger is making in its ongoing grocery delivery battles with the likes of Amazon, Walmart and Albertsons. Earlier this year, Kroger increased its investment in U.K.-based Ocado, and will bring that company’s robotic, smart warehouses and last-mile logistics platform to the U.S. for faster, more efficient delivery.

When all these programs run for real, you’ll have robots packing your groceries, which will be loaded into autonomous vehicles that will deliver them to your door any time of day or night. If you’re in Scottsdale and shop at Fry’s, let us know if you use the new autonomous driving delivery and how well it goes.