BYD is a Chinese automaker which has a bus-making factory in California
Nuro has supplied Domino’s, Kroger and 7-eleven with autonomous delivery vehicles
The vehicle that will be built by this partnership will be Nuro’s third generation autonomous vehicle.
BYD and Nuro will work together to build the third generation of Nuro’s autonomous delivery vehicles in the United States.
BYD is a Chinese automaker that already has a presence on the American market due to the many electric buses it makes in its Lancaster, California factory.
The partnership between the two companies will allow Nuro to build its vehicle in this factory and thus expand quicker than before due to less manufacturing constraints. Nuro will then add the autonomous driving systems at its own facility in Nevada. BYD will also use its experience in the EV industry to supply the battery, motors, electronic powertrain controls and customer-interface displays.
These vehicles are specifically designed to transport goods rather than people, so they don’t have seats or side-windows and they can be configured in the most cargo-efficient way possible.
Nuro, which was founded by former executives of Google’s self-driving car program, has already supplied Domino’s, Kroger and 7-eleven with the first two generations of its vehicle, and it has secured a long-term partnership with Fed-Ex.
The third generation of the company’s vehicle will feature many improvements over the current version, such as an increased payload, twice the cargo volume, modular inserts that will allow greater customisability and temperature-controlled compartments to keep food items hot or frozen goods cold.
The safety of the vehicle will also be improved by the addition of many new sensors, cameras and a lidar that will provide its computer with redundant methods of seeing its environment in order to mitigate the effects of a sensor failure on the driving of the vehicle. In order to protect pedestrians better in case of an impact, an external airbag will be fitted to the new model.
