In the race to develop self-driving cars , much of the attention has focused on ferrying people.
But delivering goods – from groceries to packages to books and more – may offer a considerable opportunity as well.
“We think there’s a very good business,” said Sherif Marakby, Ford’s vice president for autonomous vehicles and electrification. And for Ford, it starts with pizza.
The Domino’s pizza chain this week plans to start testing deliveries using a self-driving Ford Fusion sedan outfitted with enough sensors, electronics and software to find its way to customers’ homes or offices in a section of this city 40 miles west of Detroit.
“It’s going to be a real learning experience,” said Dennis Maloney, chief digital officer at Domino’s, which is based here. “No one really knows what’s going to happen when customers walk out to the car. They’re faced with a car. There’s no human interaction. What happens if they approach the car from the wrong direction? Will people mind coming out of their house? We want to understand all that.”
If answers begin to emerge, the possibilities are not hard to imagine. Americans already take delivery of billions of dollars’ worth of products sold by Amazon and other online retailers. In the future, a retailer like Home Depot could deliver building materials directly to job sites.
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