Motional Partners With Uber Eats On Automated Deliveries In Santa Monica

Back in the early to middle 2010s as development of automated driving systems was taking off once everyone realized what Google GOOG was doing with its team of DARPA Grand Challenge veterans, the focus was almost exclusively on moving people. But as the difficulty of the problem became ever more apparent, most of the companies pursuing the technology began to turn their attention to moving goods. The latest to jump into automated deliveries is Motional, the joint venture of Aptiv APTV and Hyundai. 

Motional has been carrying paying passengers on the Lyft LYFT platform in Las Vegas since 2018 and earlier this year announced that the gambling mecca would be one of several cities where it plans to launch a driverless robotaxi service in 2023. Lyft also announced that the new Hyundai Ioniq 5 would be the vehicle platform used for its robotaxis. 

Waymo, Argo AI, Cruise and others have already been using their automated driving prototypes for deliveries for several years. Cruise recently showed off a locker module that can be slid into its upcoming Origin taxi allowing it to switch between people and packages in minutes as the demand shifts during the course of a business day. 

Motional has now partnered with Uber Eats to pilot a delivery service in Santa Monica, California starting in early 2022. Motional expanded its test program into the southern California city in mid-2021, after building high-definition maps of the test area. Like most of the other areas where automated vehicles are being deployed, Santa Monica generally has very good weather so that the vehicles don’t have to deal with much rain or snow. 

The Ioniq 5s used for delivery will have some limited modifications in the cargo area to better accommodate packages and prepared meals. They will otherwise be similar to the vehicle first shown publicly in September 2021 during the IAA Mobility show in Munich, Germany. 

Deliveries make a lot of sense for automated driving system companies. When passengers get into a vehicle, they expect to be able to go to any arbitrary location by the quickest safest route. Unfortunately, this can sometimes mean that there is no one waiting for a ride near that drop-off point. The vehicles then have to go back empty to where passengers are, accumulating so-called dead-head miles. These empty miles cost money, time and energy and can contribute to more traffic congestion. 

Guidehouse Insights projects that cargo will outpace the market for automated vehicles throughout much of the 2020s while consumer vehicle sales only make up a small slice of AV deployments. 

Delivery vehicles can take routes that may be easier for the system to handle safely but take a few more minutes or turns, something that may annoy a passenger. But packages don’t care. Packages also don’t care so much about pooling so multiple deliveries can be made on a single run, reducing dead-head miles. Vehicles rarely need to be cleaned after deliveries. Deliveries can often be scheduled, adding better predictability to utilization. Overall, the unit economics of deliveries tend to be significantly more favorable than passengers. 

The key for all of the companies developing and deploying automated driving systems will be flexibility to allow the vehicles to be used for whatever tasks are necessary and available throughout the day. This will allow the vehicles to be utilized at a much higher rate than the 4-5% typical for a personal vehicle. If this can be accomplished, it could actually lead to a reduction in congestion while single purpose vehicles may end up making it worse.