More cheese, less human... Domino's is launching self-driving pizza delivery in Houston, TX later this year. The fully-autonomous minivans are named "R2" and created by California-based Nuro (look at this thing go). The startup was founded by two Waymo engineers (that's Google's self-driving car side-hustle) who tested them out in the dry heat of Scottsdale, Arizona.
Here's how it goes down... These adorable pizza-packed vehicles are purpose-built — designed to deliver you carbs as efficiently as possible:
- No room for people: At 8.5-feet long, the R2 has no driver's seat, steering wheel, or brake pedal — just pizza box storage.
- No sidewalks: Unlike Postmates' and Amazon's mini-bot delivery concepts, R2 rides with traffic at 25 mph.
- Easy, app-y process: Houstonians can open their Domino's app, click "robot delivery," and they'll receive a PIN when R2 arrives. Type those digits into the delivery bot and boom — it's pepperoni time.
Domino's is cutting humans from its diet... Just as Uber and Lyft are banking on self-driving cars to help them achieve future profitability, the pizza chain wants to avoid delivery boys to save costs (it's thinking like a tech company). We counted three other Domino’s partnerships to cut out drivers and their costly wages: