The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has awarded autonomous vehicle startup Nuro with a permit to temporarily deploy up to 5,000 low-speed electric delivery vehicles free of human controls.
The Nuro R2 has been designed to make short trips and will be restricted to pre-mapped neighborhood streets. The vehicles will be deployed during a two-year period and offer a delivery service for grocery stores, restaurants, and other businesses.
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In granting the Nuro R2 a permit to test on public roads, the NHTSA has for the first time approved a petition for a vehicle that doesn’t meet all existing U.S. auto safety standards, such as featuring normal human controls like a steering wheel and mirrors.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao says that for vehicles like the Nuro R2, “certain features that the department traditionally required – such as mirrors and windshield for vehicles carrying drivers – no longer make sense.”
Nuro was co-founded in 2016 by a pair of former Google engineers who had worked on the company’s self-driving car project. Last year, Nuro raised $940 million from SoftBank Group Corp and the company is now valued at $2.7 billion.
In December 2019, the state of California said it would allow ‘light-duty’ autonomous delivery vehicles to hit public streets across the state with a requirement test vehicles without a backup driver will need a certified link to a remote operator that can take control. At the time, Nuro said it would apply for a permit to test the R2 in California, having already tested the vehicle in Arizona and Texas.
