Commentary

Autonomous Delivery Vans Move Into Mass Production

The main issue for self-driving vehicles is who -- or what -- will ride in them.

Numerous studies show that most consumers are hardly clamoring to trade in their personal driving experience to ride in a self-driving vehicle.

The more logical start for self-driving or autonomous technology is to move or deliver things.

Now a Chinese company is moving forward along those lines, starting mass production of self-driving delivery vans.

Neolix started production Friday with plans to deliver 1,000 of the vehicles to customers including Huawei Technologies and JD.Com, according to a report in Bloomberg.

“Driverless cars will change the world, just like the shift from the carriage to the automobile,” Neolix founder Yu Enyuan, 45, told Bloomberg. “I have been looking for something that is worth fighting [for] with everything I have and what I am doing now is that.”

More than 100 of the vehicles, which cost about $30,000, have been tested in enclosed areas.

In the U.S., Kroger is delivering groceries in self-driving vehicles from Nuro while Amazon and others are looking to deliver packages by drone.

Meanwhile, American motorists drive on.

2 comments about "Autonomous Delivery Vans Move Into Mass Production".
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  1. Jennifer Jarratt from Leading Futurists LLC, June 10, 2019 at 1:22 p.m.

    As has been pointed out about other technologies these new devices turn out to be much more useful to aging generations than to the young--see the Apple watch or the phone as an emergency call device, the ipad as making reading easier (larger type and backlit) and making life simpler by removing clutter (too many books, newspapers), plus storing key items of information, and offering video calls with family, friends. I'd jump into an autonomously driven car today, if there was one. The delivery vehicles can reduce the physical effort of grocery shopping, and potentially take on other chores. Not to mention delivered meals and hand picked clothing. And there's TaskRabbit for handyperson jobs. Other needs may not be met quickly if they can't be seen to be attractive to the young consumer, however.

  2. R MARK REASBECK from www.USAonly.US , June 10, 2019 at 3:40 p.m.

    Everbody in this tech race to no-where acts like home delivery is something new and novel.  Back in the late 1800's early 1900's ICE was delivered regularly for people's ice boxes.  Car makers produced a "Panel Delivery" version of their vehicles, just for home or business deliveries.  Grocery stores, florists, bakeries, dry cleaners, dairies, etc always had a fleet of delivery panel trucks. Even then, they brought it to your door, not some Gro-cart in your driveway.  So someone tell me what is so great about having it delievered by taking a job away from a driver?? 
    @ Jennifer: all the devices you mentioned are personal improvements but do not interfere
    with other people as does Auto-tonomous cars.  Being able to see large letters on a i-pad screen is a long way from billions of bits of information to try and keep a car on the road,
    not to mention you can't keep a Sirius radio signal on any given day, what will the car do with glitches, updates, hackers, municipalities not on board?
    Dumbest idea of the 21 Century.

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About the Author

Chuck Martin is Editor of the AI & IoT Daily at MediaPost and writes the daily Connected Thinking column. He is a NY Times Business bestselling author and his latest book is “Digital Transformation 3.0” (The New Business-to-Consumer Connections of The Internet of Things.) He is CEO of Net Future Institute and a frequent keynote speaker internationally. Follow him on Twitter @chuckmartin and contact him at Chuck@MediaPost.com.