Uber will start testing autonomous deliveries through Uber Eats in partnership with autonomous vehicle company Motional, the companies announced in a press release. Motional is a partnership between Hyundai and Aptiv, and said that the pilot will launch sometime in “early 2022.” As you can imagine, it won’t be a fully autonomous service right off the bat.
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In order to test the service, customers will have to pick from “a curated set of meal kits from select restaurants,” meaning that all the food options available on the platform won’t be able to be delivered at onset. It also won’t be completely driverless, for now. The company said that “we will be launching the service with safety operators present in the vehicle.” It will also be confined to the Santa Monica area in California at first, where a large portion of Motional’s staff members work. It is also still unknown how many vehicles will be used during the pilot programme.
Uber initially planned to convert the semi-professionalized cab driver workforce into a contingent one, and then remove those overhead costs entirely by investing in self-driving vehicles. Back in 2014 former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said: “The reason Uber could be expensive is you’re paying for the other dude in the car. When there is no other dude in the car, the cost of taking an Uber anywhere is cheaper.”
In 2020, Uber sold off its self-driving arm, known as the Advanced Technologies Group, to Aurora. This was necessary in order to ensure the future of the business, which was particularly hard hit by lockdowns and quarantines as the global pandemic disrupted travel around the world like never before. Uber’s core business saw ridership fall off a cliff and it also had to retrench thousands of permanent employees.
