Episode 145 - Making Life Easier With Autonomous Delivery

Picture this: An eco-friendly, zero-occupant AV that delivers items like groceries and prescriptions to your doorstep—all while prioritizing the safety of others. Leading AV company Nuro is doing just that.

By transforming local commerce with goods-focused AV delivery solutions, Nuro is saving consumers valuable time while striving to make streets safer and cities more livable. The hardware, software, and behavior of Nuro’s custom autonomous delivery vehicles are designed to prioritize the safety, even earning the company a first-of-its-kind autonomous vehicle exemption from the US Dept of Transportation (DOT) and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) as well as the first commercial deployment permit in the state of California.

From delivering packages for FedEx, pizza from Domino’s, and groceries from Kroger, Nuro’s integrated partnerships are a huge piece of its growth strategy. The company has also signed a 10-year partnership with Uber and piloted autonomous local delivery for communities in Texas, Arizona, and California.

We sat down with Petch Jirapinyo, Head of Commercialization at Nuro, to discuss the company’s innovative technology, strong partnerships, and successful go-to-market strategy. It’s an insightful conversation that offers a glimpse into the future of autonomous delivery.

Meet Our Guest

PETCH JIRAPINYO
Head of Commercialization, Nuro

Petch Jirapinyo is Head of Commercialization at Nuro, where he is responsible for connecting Nuro’s autonomous delivery technology with its product, partnerships, and go-to-market strategy. Petch leads a team focused on determining the best path to commercialize Nuro’s technology and translate it into products and services that address the pain points of communities across the nation. His team is involved with everything from signing and servicing go-to-market partners, building the delivery service layer, creating new business models, and more. Prior to Nuro, Petch was a management consultant at Bain & Company where he focused on corporate strategy, new product introduction, and organizational culture for companies across Southeast Asia. Petch earned his M.B.A. from the Stanford University School of Business and his B.A. in Computer Science with a minor in Economics from Harvard University, where he graduated Summa Cum Laude.

Transcript:

Grayson Brulte:

Hello, I'm your host, Grayson Brulte. Welcome to another episode of SAE Tomorrow Today. A show about emerging technology and trends and mobility with leaders, innovators, and strategists who make it all happen. On today's episode, we're absolutely honored to be joined by Petch Jirapinyo, head of commercialization at Nuro.

On today's episode, we'll discuss the future of autonomous delivery vehicles. We hope you enjoy this episode. Petch, welcome to the podcast. 

Petch Jirapinyo:

Grayson, thanks for having me.

Grayson Brulte:

We're excited to have you here cuz Nuro's well on the road to commercialization. You're getting world class partnerships. You have Walmart, you have FedEx, you have Kroger, you have BYD, and then you have everybody's favorite delivery, Domino's. Putting this all together. What's Nuro's commercialization strategy? 

Petch Jirapinyo:

Yeah that's a great question. Grayson, so let me start with there are really three aspects to our commercialization strategy, let's start with the very basic one first. We are a delivery only company, AV company, right? We don't distract ourselves with passenger with trucking, right? We just focus on one use case. And that is delivery, on demand delivery. So right now 30 to 50% larger than passenger, right hailing, this is like a little known fact. So delivery is a massive market, and this is before you factor in traditional e-commerce and enterprise deliveries as well, which are four x five x even larger than on demand.

So this is a massive market opportunity yet, so many other AV companies focusing on passengers and trucking. We say, you know what? We are gonna just focus on one use case and do it really well. We are going to optimize our vehicle economics, autonomy, operations for this one use case.

So that's the first pillar if you may call for our commercialization strategy. The second part of this is we believe. Commercializing a new tech like AV takes a village, right? And we are not gonna try to own every single part every single step in terms of commercializing av ourselves.

We are gonna focus on what we are world class at and in other areas we are gonna partner. What this means is pretty early on in our company's lives, we have chosen to be a B2B company. We are not going to build out our own marketplace, a retailer interface, and none of those things. There are so many companies that are world class at those areas already.

We are going to just focus on building an amazing tech and a really efficient. and in order to enable our partners to deliver better and more affordably. So that's the second part about strategy, being an enabler within the system, not trying to own everything ourselves. The last component of our commercialization strategy is about achieving a tight integration with each partner that we work.

What does this mean? It means that we design our hardware with many of our partners directly in terms of the size, in terms of specs, but we also make sure that we don't just build a technology and product and hoping that they will come. We work with them to figure out, to download hundreds of millions of real world delivery data points from them that allow us to and we put all of these delivery data points Grayson into our similar.

So we get to optimize our routes. We get to figure out where to expand to. We go get, to figure out what road features, driving features we should solve first in order to maximize impact that we can have on our partners. So those are the key pillars of our strategy being delivery first being a B2B company being an enabler within the ecosystem and achieving a tight integration with each partner that we work with to be sure that we develop the right product, right technology for each of our partners. 

Grayson Brulte:

It's a smart strategy. It's one that I wanna highlight, the focus aspect. There's so many other companies in the autonomy space, they go onto the next thing, oh, we gotta pass. Oh, we gotta go into trucking. Everybody's going to trucking, or whatever.

The next thing might be if it might, perhaps they're gonna go into delivery. How from a culture does Nuro stay laser-focused on just delivery? 

Petch Jirapinyo:

Yeah, it's not easy. We started from the beginning with the founders Dave and JZ. They were part of Google self-driving car projects for years and years.

And one insight that they had at that point that led to them starting new role was that autonomy is no matter when this is gonna land. And. Strategy when it comes to introducing autonomy is how to limit down the scope in a smart way. That would allow us to be safer on roads in order to accelerate the path to commercialize, to scale up the technology and their insight was, Rather than us trying to tackle everything all at once, we delivery is gonna be the safest path to introduce autonomy.

Why? Because once you remove the passengers, you remove, you already take humans out from half of the equation. You can just focus on the people outside. You don't have to deal with the trade offs between the comfort and safety of people inside with the safety of people outside the vehicle, right?

We get to design the vehicle. Sort of self-sacrifice. We have an external airbag. We have materials out front that absorbs in energy in the event of coalition, right? And that's that was the original thesis that led Dave to, and Dave and JZ to leave Google self-driving car project and start Nuro.

And we are so convicted. We are so confident in this thesis that pretty much over the past six and a half years of Nuro we believe that this is the right path. And the more Gone into this, the more we have seen how the technology and industry evolve we've just become even more convinced in our strategy, in our original thesis.

And that has allowed us to really stay focused on this one use case, this one singular vision that we have had since the beginning of the company.

Grayson Brulte:

And that's why the company's scaling, in my opinion. That's why you're getting these world class partners, you mentioned that the vehicle prioritizes safety.

I find it really interesting that a prioritized safety for other road users and not necessarily for the bot. It's well done. When you go into a new community, if you're gonna deploy in this community or that community, how do you message that to the law enforcement, to the members of the community and be sharing the roads with your vehicles?

Petch Jirapinyo:

Yeah, so we work really closely with all the local communities. Before we go in, we have a lot of events for law enforcement trying to introduce our vehicles to them. Here's how you interact with the vehicles. If you have any issues, here's contact information that you, that we have that you can call us up.

We also work with all the local community organizations as well to make sure that when we deploy in each local community, we take into account any concerns that they might have, we answer the questions ahead of time for them. So that's a big part of our deployment strategy. We always work with local communities, but I think, you know what, Grayson, I think what's more important is, I think the proofs in the pudding is when we saw the operations.

And it's when the local communities get to see how we do as like a local sort of a neighbor, right? We operate in their communities. It's when our vehicles, it's when they get to see how our vehicles drive and they drive more slowly. They always respect the speed limit.

They always a little bit more polite in terms of their driving profile. And that's how you gain. With local communities, think how the communication strategy only goes so far. Ultimately, it's about us being a good neighbor in any local community that we go to.

Grayson Brulte:

It's well said. In Houston, you delivered pizzas for Domino's. What was that like the first time you showed up at an individual's house? The open up. Ah, fresh pizza in a bot. This is wonderful. What was that like?

Petch Jirapinyo:

Oh, it was, it's fun. It's so I got to shadow a lot of these deliveries and I've been with the company with Nuro for five years now, walking past our robots, parked inside our HQ every day.

So I've just really have become really accustomed to our view course. So Grayson one of the customers that I got to shadow and I was waiting with the customer for the robot to arrive. And our robot had some issues, unfortunately, and we were maybe five, seven minutes late and it felt just terrible that we couldn't meet our promise, our SLA, and it was just apologizing to, to her and her family.

And then oh, about pull up and the customer she just started jumping up and down and her daughter. Smiling and giggling and waving high to the Nuro. And she, the customer said that that was the most exciting thing that happened to her all year. And it was a moment like that just kinda made you realize that what we are building here is magical.

It's rare, different from anything that you see out there. And the feedback so far has. Overwhelmingly positive. We've done tens of thousands of deliveries and our net promoter score which is the customer satisfaction measurement has been in the high eighties the whole time. Sometimes, when we are in Silicon Valley, we can be in a bubble.

So once you get to go out and see how local communities and your end. Interact with your product, you get to see you get to make sure that you become a little bit more grounded in terms of the product you have to build and what you need to build to make sure that the communities and customers will love the service that we have there.

Grayson Brulte:

I want to take it one step further, more on the community aspect. You made that little girl's day and then when she goes to school the next day and the show and tell or what did you do? And she goes, the robot came to my house and delivered groceries. Oh my goodness. How did it go? And then she's so proud because she was part of that moment.

And that's a really great way to build trust. And then perhaps her friend's parents call and say, okay, we want to, we wanna try the Nuro robot, she tried the Nuro bot. That's a really great way to help build that public trust by integrating into the local community. 

Petch Jirapinyo:

A hundred percent. Grayson and as it turns out, kids really love our robots. We just have a lot of footage of kids waving high and they personify our robots. Where if you look at the front of our robots, it almost looks like it's.  And we actually had a long debate in internally on that. We wanted to keep a little bit of a dimple in the robots to make it look like it's smiling, to, to make it look like it's a friendly robot, just running errands for you in the local neighborhoods.

And this is a big part of our strategy, Grayson, we believe that. The first time that local communities will get to interact with self-driving vehicles, they should feel friendly and approachable. They should be driving a little bit more slowly. They should feel like, they are part of the communities and not so a really advanced kind of sci-fi robocops coming to take over your neighborhoods.

And that's has been part of our design philosophy from. 

Grayson Brulte:

It's a good design philosophy. I've said this publicly before, but they should look like Pixar characters from cars. And then you start to build that trust. Mater shows up or Lightning McQueen don't wanna drive that Lightning McQueen, but you want that smile and the happiness and the joy when you get there, when you deliver groceries and food, you're bringing.

Happiness and joy. Some, there's smaller families, three individuals, five individuals grocery stores are booming now. The $638,736 are spent a week in supermarkets, national nationally. How much groceries can you put in a Nuro bot that can go to that family? Can a family of five get enough groceries for that entire week?

Petch Jirapinyo:

Yeah. So this is an ar an area that we've been working with our partner, Kroger. So Kroger is the largest grocery chain in the United States. And they've been one of our strongest supporters from day one of the company, as well as part of our design revision for the third generation vehicle that is going to come out next year.

We actually work closely with our friends at Kroger to make sure that we can serve most of the grocery needs there. So for the next generation of our vehicle, Grayson, we can fit about 24 full sized grocery bags into our vehicle. 24 grocery packs. When was the last time you bought that many groceries, that much grocery? So based on the stats that we look at, that's P 99 of grocery orders already. So we are pretty confident that we would be able to serve, the majority of grocery needs pretty well. I think another trend that is happening too is we believe that once deliveries become cheaper, more affordable, easier people will more likely to break up the grocery orders into sort of more frequent orders as well.

If you look at the statistics right? Grocery orders are about three times the size of normal in-person grocery visits, right? What that means is people wait a week or two weeks before they have enough of a need before they order grocery online. And that's because each grocery order, delivery order is really expensive.

It's about, $10 in terms of overhead costs. So you want to combine as many trips together as possible. We believe that as we bring down the cost of groceries by two x three x five x, people are gonna start, gonna break down the grocery orders, and they're gonna try to order more on the go.

So individual orders will become smaller over time too. So that's like how we see that space evolving in the future.

Grayson Brulte:

It's wonderful too because then you open up the opportunity for fresh fruits and vegetables. Perhaps you're, you partner with a local. farm and that can bring up to that family. They can have better fruits and vegetables. That's a big win there. 

Petch Jirapinyo:

Exactly. Grayson, rather than you having to buy your fruits, your vegetable, your milk and have it last one to two weeks now you can have it delivered to your home every few days at a much lower price. 

Grayson Brulte:

Okay? So I'm gonna give you a grocery order that a lot of Americans or individuals around the world, for that matter of fact, have.

It's in the summer, it's hot. You buy ice cream and perhaps you're too tired and you don't want to cook, and you bring home the rotisserie chicken and a car. You have to balance it in the car. You can't put the ice cream next to the rotisserie chicken. How can Nuro get the ice cream there so it's not melted and the rotisserie chicken home, it's still warm for dinner. 

Petch Jirapinyo: 

Yeah. So this is an area that we are spending a lot of time on. Currently most deliveries are being done, most on-demand deliveries are being done with gig workers. So the, that process, that step is not always being, a lot of delivery companies are not paying a lot of attention to food quality.

The way we think about it is now we have the opportunity because we get to controlled vehicle experience. So the way we think about. We have two cargo bays per vehicle. Each of these cargo bays is designed to be modular, so we can put in what we call a compartment insert. This is essentially like a, almost a small cabinet you can put into a, each of the cargo base in order to optimize and customize our vehicle for different types of use.

So one of these compartment inserts that we are working on, we call it the thermal cube. This one allows us to adjust the temperature of individual lockers to meet the needs of different types of deliveries. For example, if you're gonna deliver pizza, it's important to keep the pizza warm so we can keep the temperature more on the warmer side.

If you're gonna deliver ice cream, we can keep the temperature, in a, on a cool cooler range. So that's kind of part of our strategies in order. Can make sure that food quality arrives, when it arrives at your home the food quality remains high. 

Grayson Brulte:

Certain vehicles from a modular aspect for Kroger, they'll live in, let's call it Kroger Depot, and the Domino's vehicles will live in Domino's Depot because they're different use cases or will they go back to a centralized depot and you'll swap out the modular? How will that work? 

Petch Jirapinyo:

Yeah, so we have two types of two business models that we used to work with our partners. One is called dedicated vehicle. So for these dedicated vehicles we basically ring fence these vehicles for a certain partner. So you can imagine FedEx, for example, the use cases are very different from the other use cases we do.

And they have their way of optimizing utilization all day round, right? So with that, we give them, you. Tens, hundreds, thousands of vehicles directly. And with that, they get to, they can keep these vehicles directly at their facilities. So in the morning, we don't have to bring these vehicles to their facilities and in the process, so wasting a battery range, right?

And wa you know, this. This becomes this creates empty miles. So that's a, that's one of our two business models dedicated vehicles in the other business model. The other business model is chaired vehicles for the partners who don't want to deal with optimization, with maintenance, with making sure that their utilization is well balanced out throughout the day.

We'll handle all of that for you, and then we just become a delivery asset service model. So you just call us whenever. And then we'll dispatch the best vehicle that is closest to you that has the right conf hardware configuration to pick up that delivery and fulfill that delivery for you. And then we charge you on a per delivery basis.

So our partners have two choices on how much they want to take part in terms of utilization optimization, in terms of maintenance. And with that, they get a little bit. A custom business model. And then for the partners who don't wanna deal with all those things, we'll just hand handle each individual delivery for them.

Grayson Brulte: 

You have a very big partner we haven't talked about yet in Uber. I could see it going the first way or the second way. In the business model it's a 10 year partnership where Uber's gonna use your vehicles to deliver food and goods. Could you talk about that partnership and how it's gonna work from a business use case scenario, please.

Petch Jirapinyo:

I can touch on the partnership at a high level. So obviously Uber is the world's largest mobility company, and they're pretty sophisticated in terms of thinking about autonomy because, previously they had att as an in-house autonomy unit before that got spun out. So they knew, they know pretty well what autonomy is capable of the potential of the technology as constraints. So we've been talking with them about partnering up for a few years now. And then until earlier this year, that conversation became more serious. And they know that AV is gonna happen one day and they want to make sure that, and they know that. When AV happens, that is gonna be, that's gonna require sort of new ways of thinking, right?

It's gonna be very different in terms of how you dispatch vehicles versus humans, how you deal with restaurant pickups. How you deal with optimizing utilization and routing. And so they want to make sure that they get to start optimizing all these factors for when AVS will arrive right away so that this partnership goes quite deep.

It's multi phases and each phase optimizes for slightly different things. not just Commercial deliveries and that's it. We try to kinda optimize for deliveries. Now, coming back to your question, Grayson, in terms of how this fits into the broader use cases, the way we think about it is we want to build a common platform that lets our partners deliver anything right from restaurant food to groceries, to prescriptions, alcohol, e-commerce packages, and.

It's one of the best partners when it comes to making sure that we get to stretch ourselves. With as many use cases they do grocery through delivery. They do food delivery as well. They do convenience, store delivery. So we get to test our platform, our system with these different types of use cases.

And again, food being one of the most difficult ones because, Food quality needs because of the, you have to be really fast when it comes to delivering food. But I think another aspect that I'm really excited about when it comes to the Uber partnership is the fact that we get to work with small and medium businesses.

When you introduce a new technology, oftentimes the costs of time associated with adopting new technology tends to be quite high, which means that small and medium businesses tend to be left behind. But with Uber we get to work with Uber to create a platform and makes it really easy for small and medium businesses to adopt AV right away.

And in fact the current phase of our partnership that we are delivering for Uber right now, we are exclusively working with local restaurants with no more than one location. And this is our way of making sure that we understand that segment of of merchants and make sure that we design the right product for them.

Grayson Brulte: 

What your partnership with Uber is, Those local restaurateurs, the ability to scale without having to build a new kitchen, expand their physical footprint. You're giving them the ability to scale. You're giving them what is even greater, the ability of discovery. There might be an individual that says, oh, they have a, I heard they have a great pasta.

Oh, the Nuro bot will deliver to me. Oh, okay. Let's try. Oh my God, this is amazing. And now they have a new customer and they start getting it delivered. And perhaps they're, they make world renowned french fries and hamburgers and then they get delivered. I have the thing I call the french fry test.

When I look at all delivery , it's a french fries arrive and they're crispy and not soggy. That's a home run win for that delivery service, and they're gonna get my business every time. How can Nuro’s through technology or innovations that you're developing, that if it's a local restaurant that has the world's greatest french fries, that when they get to say your house pet, that they're crispy and they're not soggy, what can you do for that?

Petch Jirapinyo:

Yeah, keep keeping the fries crispier. It is not easy. It's hard. So when it comes to food quality, there are many factors involved, right? But two, two main factors are temperature and humidity and a lot of food Fries gets soggy because you don't have good ventilation systems.

So if you don't have, if you are packaging that's let fries doesn't let the steam come out, then it's gonna get soggy. Same for pizza as well. So this is an area where we are working with some of our partners to design the compartment insert to kind help with temperature control as well as humidity.

So this is a pretty interesting space for us. I think one, one thing to think about too is, this is nothing. , right? Keeping food quality great is not quite related to ab and in fact, one of our partners Dominoes they are one of the original food delivery companies, right?

They were created to be a food delivery company. So they have invested a lot of r and d into what's the best way to keep food quality high for 15, 20 minutes takes to get to customers home. So again, this is an area that we are doing a lot of research partnerships with some of our food delivery partners to make sure that, we get to advance a few and get to improve quality of the food that we deliver.

Grayson Brulte:

You hit the nail on the head. Packaging. Packaging. The right packaging in the right environment will deliver crispy fries and you'll have me Grayson happy customer that will tell everybody to use the Nuro service you. You've worked very closely as you talked about throughout this podcast with your partners, do you also work closely with your partners to determine routes and operating roads of where you're going to operate?

Is that a collaborative environment where FedEx might say, Hey, Petch, we have a lot of traffic in this area, and there are smaller packages that are perfect size for the bot. Do you work very closely on determining the routes that the vehicles will operate with your partners? 

Petch Jirapinyo: 

The answer is yes. We don't just do, our relationships with our partners are not just transactional.

They give us, Hey, go deliver from point A to point B, and we just do it. Each of these partners they, we work with them quite closely and many of our partners actually access to hundreds of millions of real world delivery data points that we, and each of these individual delivery data points is from point A to point B.

This is time of day, right? And we use all of these delivery data points to optimize not just like our end operation, but all the way upstream to the way we build our autonomy stack. We know exactly. Where demand is, and hence we know where to focus in terms of solving autonomy first. So this goes can pretty much kinda end-to-end stack.

We incorporate in our partners data in order to, can help us move faster and be more focused around what we need to, what we need, what we should be focused on as a company. Grayson. So ultimately I think in inside Nuro it's about technology and kind of demand has to intersect, right? So beyond looking at all these demand patterns, we are also figuring out with our partners we are pretty transparent with them around our cost structure.

So we try to optimize what are the best use cases that are perfect for our cost structure at any point in. FedEx, for example. We know that the initial use cases are going to revolve around the ones that, where CU end customers have to be there in person to interact with delivery people, right? These tends to be the types of deliveries that are most expensive because delivery people the delivery drivers have to wait for the customers to come out and hence the the most inefficient ones.

And we can help FedEx solve these use cases first. So these. Scheduled use cases scheduled deliveries, appointment signature deliveries pickups or reverse logistics where delivery drivers go in and pick up packages from you. So again, we work with all of our partners pretty closely to determine routing as well as economics of our service.

Grayson Brulte:

 Today, FedEx signature, FedEx Overnight, they ring the. In the future, your bots are not gonna magically climb up my stairs until my door and ring my doorbell will fed. Were you working with FedEx to develop a push notification perhaps on your phone it'll say, dear resident, there's a neural bot outside with your package.

What is that interaction going to look like? 

Petch Jirapinyo:

Yeah, so FedEx already has a robust system around notifying the customers. If you receive a FedEx package, they send emails to you. They's also send text messages to you as well. You if you opt into that notification flow. So we get to build on on, on, the short of giant here.

They already figure out how to navigate, how to coordinate with their customers and make sure that our system is integrated directly into. Flow now, I think there will be new things that we'll have to add on as well. All of a sudden, we don't have humans who are gonna go ring your doorbells, right?

So we have to make sure that the customers will have to be there within a couple of minutes of our vehicles being there versus previously, if the customers don't come out for 10, 15 minutes, that's okay. The package, which just sit there and wait for the customers for whenever they're ready.

So we looking and testing we are looking to, we are testing with FedEx around what's the right notification flow. So we send a message 10 minutes before or five minutes before. And then once we get there, how often and how frequent we should notify our customers to make sure that they're gonna be there to receive a package in time, as well as how long our vehicle should wait There.

For the customer before deciding to just move on if the customer doesn't come out. So again, I think, probably 80% of it is already there as part of FedEx's infrastructure, but we are still experimenting with the last 20% to customize the existing infrastructure that they have for kind of the age of autonomous vehicles.

Grayson Brulte:

What you described is you're able to do this because of your tightly integrated partnerships, which has me wondering. FedEx ships packages all over the world. Domino's delivers pizzas, Kroger sells groceries. They're all different. Types of businesses fun, fundamentally the way that they operate, but they have one common denominator.

They have a partnership with Nuro. How is Nuro able to work with such a variety of companies? Do you have in-house grocery store experts, shipping experts? How are you able to go across all of those verticals? 

Petch Jirapinyo:

Yeah, I think o ultimately all our partners, one very similar things Grayson, first of all, they want a reliable delivery experience, right?

Currently. Labor shortages in many markets finding good drivers becomes a bigger problem. Retaining drivers becomes a problem. Training drivers becomes a problem. So one, they want supply reliability. Number two, they want better unit economics for delivery. Last mile logistics is expensive because, you have to be able to go to individual homes.

Points in time. Most of our deliver del most of our retail and logistics partners want to solve the economics piece. Lastly all of them want to solve the delivery experience piece more and more. Retailers, the way that customers are interacting with brands, it's via the delivery channel.

Back in the days when it was all in-person shopping, retailers invested a ton into an amazing in-person shopping experience. But now more and more customers just interact with brands via delivery channels. Yet delivery channels are currently like an afterthought when it comes to an experience, right?
So they, a lot of our partners want to connect up-level the experience when it comes to delivery and make sure that. Represents their brand well. So these are pretty common across all verticals, be it restaurants, groceries, packages. Now, in terms of internally we also have to, for us to be the best autonomous delivery company, we also have to recognize the nuances and the differences between these verticals, between these use cases as well.

How we go by doing that is again with the tight partner. That we have with each of these partners, we have dedicated teams for our, for different partners that are able to go deep with them and test new product ideas with them. Make sure that we always listen to our customers together in our pilot and kind of structure a pilot in a way that we test us ourselves, can push boundaries for each of these verticals and make sure that we don't just build a product that is the lowest com common denominator across use cases.

Grayson Brulte:

Brands matter. Brands matter. Unit economics also matter. Is unit economics one of the reasons why you partner with BYD to build the factory in Nevada? 

Petch Jirapinyo:

Yes. Yes. So the way we developed our product, one thing that has been helpful for us is from the start, we know exactly what our use case was going to be.

So we set the specs early on in our company's life that here's an economic score that we have. When it comes to the cost of an individual delivery, when it comes to the cost of the vehicle, right? We are not just putting in, building a real expensive vehicle and hoping that five years, 10 years from now, the vehicle will just become cheaper on their own.

We set these specs pretty early on in our company's life. And as part of this, we know that we have to find a partner. Who's an expert in building vehicles at scale that can build thousands and thousands thousands and eventually tens of thousands of vehicles reliably and affordably.

And that's where BYD comes in. BYD is one of the top EV manufacturers in the world. They know how to scale the manufacturing process well. They know how to build vehicles very cheaply and reliably. And that's our, that's why we are working with BYD to scale up our manufac. 

Grayson Brulte:

You left out that one very important part about BYD. They know how to manufacture batteries at scale. Yes, exactly. You have world-class manufacturing. You have world-class batteries. Now you have a scalable operation and as you scale, it's gonna come down to. Revenue growth. As you look to the future, how will you position Nuro for that growth? 

Petch Jirapinyo:

 Grayson, And first of all, the market size is there. We already know that delivery is huge when you come. Last mile logistics is a really big space for us to tackle. Key to scaling our revenue growth is with our partners, right? And Nuro today, we, I believe that we have the strongest list of demand partners to help make this. Across the four, five major use cases that we wanted to tackle.

We have the number one, number two leaders in that space working with us. And that's the key. It's about making sure that we are tightly integrated with our partners. We know exactly where their demand will be, and hence we know where to expand, where to focus our efforts. Again this is. Scaling up an AV operation is a cost is a pretty costly operation.

So we want to make sure that we know exactly where demand is gonna be, where our partner stores are. And that's the key part the key component of our growth strategy. 

Grayson Brulte:

You're applying to your, you're applying to your strengths. You're building a robot that can autonomously drive itself.

Goods from point A to point B. Your partner with world class partners that know how to operate and run their businesses and putting this all together, Petch, what is the future of Nuro? 

Petch Jirapinyo:

Grayson, I think the next five years is gonna be about scaling our service to millions and millions of customers, right?

This is, but beyond that. I think AV is one of the most upstream technologies as well. It's when the iPhone came around 15 years ago and that didn't just change the foreign industry. That changed music and transportation and e-commerce and automotives before that. When automotives became a mainstream product in the last century, that changed the way we live.

That changed the concept of, retail change, concept of transportation, and where we work. We could work further away from home. I also believe. Av is one of those upstream technologies that will have wide ranging impact on our society beyond just shopping. It's gonna change retail, it's gonna change how you spend time.

It's gonna change how cities are built and real estate. Right now our focus is getting our delivery service, autonomous delivery service up and running for the next three to five years and build a scalable product and service here. But beyond that, I believe that is an opportunity for. To play a bigger role in terms of driving societal change and become that platform on which many other exciting products and services can be built.

And that's what I'm really excited about. We have some ideas on how we want to continue to evolve our technology and product in the future. And I can't talk about them quite yet. But right now my focus for the next three to five years is about setting up our autonomous delivery service at scale.

Grayson Brulte:

You're align the foundation to scale and when you scale, the revenue will come. And if you keep going the way that all signs point to you, Nuro’s gonna reinvent delivery. And when you reinvent delivery, that's a special day for society cuz you're gonna lower the cost and you're gonna do it in a more sustainable way.

Go Team Nuro and as we look to wrap up this insightful conversation, what would you like our listeners to take away with them today? 

Petch Jirapinyo:

Yeah. I assume that a lot of your listeners are folks who are interested in AV, they might be thinking whether to join the industry. They might be thinking whether to invest more in AV or not.

And I think, AVS industry, we have suffered from hype cycles quite a bit. There was a peak exuberance period of 2016 to 2018 where everyone thought that AV was gonna scale to, tens of millions of vehicles gonna take over all the jobs in the next one to two years. And now we at the, on the other end of that spectrum where there's a lot of headlines coming out that, hey, AV is a pipe dream that's gonna take another 10 years to make reality.

I, my, my advice or take away it, I would love your listeners to. We have to focus on the long term, and this is an amazing technology that is going to make deliveries and transportation more affordable, more environmentally friendly, and more, more delightful overall and seeing internal progress and metrics.

I can say that the pace of progress is now accelerating. We are getting closer and closer to av, becoming a. Some of the players in the space are now starting to introduce a public service that as we can see so one takeaway that I would have for the listeners would be, ignore the hype and focus on real progress on the ground.

And AV is coming. And once it's here it's gonna be beneficial for society at large. 

Grayson Brulte:

 Autonomous vehicles are coming. Autonomous vehicles are coming. Autonomous vehicles will have a positive impact on society because today is tomorrow, tomorrow is today, and the future is Nuro. Petch, thank you so much for coming on SAE Tomorrow Today. 

  Petch Jirapinyo:

Thank you, Grayson. 

Grayson Brulte:

Thank you for listening to S SAE Tomorrow Today. If you've enjoyed this episode and would like to hear more, please kindly rate review and let us know what topics you'd like for us to explore. 

Be sure to join us next week as we speak with Ellis Jones, Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer at Goodyear.

On this episode, Ellis will share Goodyear's goal to build a better future by using renewable energy and sustainable materials. 

SAE International makes no representations as to the accuracy of the information presented in this podcast. The information and opinions are for general information only. 

SAE International does not endorse, approve, recommend, or certify any information, product, process, service, or organization presented or mentioned in this podcast.

 

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