More than 5 thousand delivery cars without drivers will go on the road
February 10, 2020 The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has given the go-ahead to the Nuro stand-alone startup, the temporary deployment of up to 5,000 low-speed electric delivery vehicles without human control.
Nuro R2 was designed for short trips and will be limited to pre-mapped surrounding streets. Vehicles will be deployed over a two-year period and will offer delivery services to grocery stores, restaurants and other businesses.
By granting Nuro R2 permission to test on public roads, NHTSA for the first time approved a vehicle application that does not comply with all US vehicle safety standards, for example, using conventional human controls such as the steering wheel and mirrors.
U.S. Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao says that for vehicles like Nuro R2, “certain functions that the department has traditionally needed, such as mirrors and a windshield for vehicles carrying drivers, no longer make sense.”
Nuro was founded in 2016 by a pair of former Google engineers who worked on a company’s self-driving car project. Last year, Nuro raised $ 940 million from SoftBank Group Corp, and the company is valued at $ 2.7 billion.
