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| Nuro self-driving service fee |
Nuro Robotics obtained its first license to market its self-driving cars in California, allowing Silicon Valley to bill customers for unmanned deliveries.
Nuro is now the first California company to obtain a license to drive self-driving cars and charge service personnel.
The reliance on remote human operators able to remotely control many autonomous vehicles has paved the way for profitability in the emerging field of autonomous driving technology.
Nuro has been using safety drivers to test self-driving cars on California roads since 2017, and state regulators approved them earlier this year to test two self-driving cars in nine cities.
The company announced that it had launched a delivery service through the standalone Toyota Prius, then added a slow-moving R2 that had no pedals, no steering wheel and just room to pack.
Last month, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, Nuro raised nearly $ 500 million in a funding round as he aggressively supported e-commerce.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration allowed Nuro, a private company based in Mountain View, to bring up to 5,000 low-speed electric cars to Houston in February without any manual manipulation such as mirrors and steering wheels.
The California Department of Cars allows the company to operate its own delivery services in parts of the Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, which means that most of Silicon Valley and its employees will be there in the line of business. But not in San Francisco or Oakland.
Nuro was founded in June 2016 and plans to start commercial deliveries early next year.
The announcement marks a milestone for Nuro, which previously announced that it had acquired independent truck company Ike, which was a hit at the state and federal levels.