Udelv partners with H-E-B on Texas autonomous grocery delivery pilot

by

in

Autonomous shipping firm Udelv has signed yet another spouse to launch a new pilot of its self-driving goods delivery agency: Texas-based supermarket H-E-B Group. The pilot will provide service to customers in Olmos Park, just outside of downtown San Antonio where the grocery merchant is based.

California-based Udelv will provide H-E-B with one of its Newton semi automatic autonomous shipping vehicles, which are already in service in trials from the Bay Area, Arizona and Houston, supplying deliveries on behalf of a number of Udelv’s other customers, which include Walmart, amongst others.

Udelv CEO and creator Daniel Laury explained in an interview that they’re very excited to be partnering with H-E-B because of the company’s reach Texas, where it’s ’s the largest grocery chain with approximately 400 stores. This first phase only covers one car and a single shop, and during this section of the pilot that the vehicle is going to have security driver on board. But the program contains the option to extend the partnership to pay more vehicles and finally achieve full driverless operation.

“They’re really at the forefront of technologies, in the areas where they need to be,” Laury explained. “It’s an extremely remarkable company. ”

For its own part, H-E-B Group has been in discussion with lots of potential partners for autonomous shipping trials, also, according to Paul Tepfenhart, SVP of Omnichannel and Emerging Technologies at H-E-B, it enjoyed Udelv specifically because of their security record, and because they didn’t come with a set plan and a fully formed off-the-shelf offering — they really partnered with HEB about what the last deployment of the pilot would look like.

The two Tepfenhart and Laury highlighted the value of customer experience in supplying autonomous alternatives, also Laury remarked that he believes Udelv’s exceptional benefit in the increasingly aggressive autonomous curbside shipping industry is its attention to the robotics of the real shipping and storage elements of its custom made automobile.

“The reason I believe we’ve already been successful is because we focused a great deal on the shipping robotics,” Laury explained. “If you consider it, there’s no sovereign shipping business that works in the event you don’t possess the robotics facet of it figured out also. You can have an autonomous car, but should you don’t possess an automated cargo space where merchants can load [their goods] and consumers could unload the automobile by themselves, you have no organization enterprise. ”

Udelv also believes that it has an advantage in regards to its own business model, which aims to generate earnings today, in exchange for supplying actual significance to paying customers, as opposed to relying on being supported entirely through financing from a wealthy investor or deep-pocketed corporate partners. Laury likens it to Tesla’s strategy, where it really has over 500,000 vehicles over the road helping it build its autonomous technologies — but most of those are operated by paying customers who get all the advantages of because of their cars now.

“We want to be that the Tesla of autonomous shipping,” Laury explained. “If you consider it, then Tesla has got 500,000 vehicles in the road […] should you consider this, for all the cars in the world which have some level of automated driver assistance (ADAS) or freedom, I believe Tesla’s 90% of these — and they get the customers to pay a ridiculous quantity of money for it. Everyone else in the business is getting financing from something different. Waymo is getting financing from search; Cruise is getting financing from GM and SoftBank and others, Nuro is getting financing from SoftBank. So, pretty much everyone else is getting financing from a resource that’s a different source from the authentic business they’re designed to be in. ”

Laury claims that Udelv’s exceptional strength is in the ability the business must provide value to partners such as H-E-B now, through its attention on robotics and solving problems like technology the robotics of their loading and customer pick-up experience, which puts it in a unique area where it could fund its own research via revenue-generating services that can be provided in-market today, as opposed to a decade from now.

Buy Tickets for every event – Sports, Concerts, Festivals and more buy tickets

Discover more from Teslas Only

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading