Nuro can now charge for robot deliveries in California

Nuro is now the first company in California with permission to operate autonomous cars commercially (via TechCrunch) The company received a license that allowed it to test its robots earlier this year, but that license will allow the company to actually charge people for the service.

According to a Medium post by Nuro’s legal and policy director, the company is planning to “announce [its] first deployment in California with an established partner. ”Who this partner is is yet to be seen, but it is likely to be a delivery service that can make use of Nuro’s completely driverless Prius vehicles, although the company plans (literally) to launch its own custom R2 bots later.

The license, issued by California DMV, only allows the company to operate its delivery service in parts of Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, which would mean that most of Silicon Valley and its technology workers would be under its control, but not San Francisco or Oakland.

There are also some additional restrictions – vehicles will only be allowed on surface streets with a speed limit of 35 miles per hour (and robots can only go at 40 mph), so don’t expect to see a driverless Prius closing along the highway to make a delivery soon. Vehicles are also only allowed to drive in “favorable weather conditions”.

The company was founded by two former Google engineers and was, ironically, the only company other than Google’s Waymo to obtain a California license to test driverless cars. Now, she defeated the other company by gaining the ability to do business with her in the state. The story is different in Arizona, however, where Waymo runs a paid shuttle service with driverless cars.

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