Uber Taps Nuro’s Street-Legal Robots For Food Deliveries

Nuro, a Softbank-backed developer of street-legal, electric delivery vehicles, has struck a long-term partnership withUber to use its micro-vans to haul food orders, groceries and other goods to customers in Silicon Valley and Houston

The new service will be available in Houston and Mountain View, California, where Nuro is based, this fall and will be expanded to other parts of the San Francisco Bay Area in the months ahead. When people arrive, the vehicles alert them and the customer opens the compartment with a code.

Nuro didn't say how many of its new vehicles will be used in the program, nor did it say how much it will cost. Cosimo Leipold, Nuro's head of partnerships, said in a statement that they can expand food delivery options from your favorite local mom and pop restaurants all the way to nationwide chains.

Nuro was created by two of the original members of the self-driving car project. More than $2 billion has been raised by the company.

The company is building its new Nuro vehicles at a new assembly facility near Las Vegas with batteries and key components being supplied by BYD. They don't have steering wheels, pedals or other conventional controls, but they have been approved to operate on public roads.

Prior to its partnership with Uber, Nuro has operated numerous pilot delivery projects with companies and services. It also counts the burrito joint as a shareholder. As a result of the new alliance, it has the potential to work with vastly more merchants, as there are more than 825,000 in the 11,000 cities worldwide on the U.S. based company's platform.