Nuro's Self-Driving R-1 Doesn't Drive You. It Drives Stuff.

Perhaps the clearest sign that self-driving vehicles are coming to a road near you is that the startup boom has settled down. Nearly all the outfits that formed to crack robo-driving problem have paired up with the big automakers that can provide the manufacturing muscle they need to go big: Argo AI with Ford, Cruise with General Motors, Waymo with Fiat Chrysler, Aurora with Volkswagen and Hyundai. The startups that are entering the space at this late date are focused on various niches the new industry has created: improving lidar and radar sensors, compressing mapping data, and so forth. Nuro.ai sits somewhere in between: It isn't trying to dominate this industry, and it's not settling for a role as a component supplier. The Silicon Valley startup did develop its own self-driving system, from scratch, but where its competitors talk about ridesharing, trucking, deliveries, and any other use case they can think of, Nuro is focused. The company, which came out of stealth mode today and just raised $92 million, is going after commercial deliveries, and it has designed a vehicle that--unless things go terribly--no human will ever sit inside.