Recently, the third generation of pure electric driverless delivery vehicles jointly developed and designed by BYD and the American science and technology innovation company Nuro was officially released. The project was officially launched in August 2019 and mass production is scheduled to begin in early 2023.
In this cooperation, BYD is responsible for vehicle development, vehicle testing and manufacturing, and provides core first-level assembly components such as blade batteries, motors, electronic controls and human-computer interaction.
Nuro offers technologies for autonomous driving, gateways, control modules and sensors. The production of the whole vehicle is completed by BYD's China plant, and the assembly of vehicle power batteries and autonomous driving parts is completed by BYD's Lancaster plant in the United States. Obviously, such a driverless delivery vehicle has not hung up on the BYD "Logo".
Relying on the technology of both parties, the third generation of autonomous delivery vehicles has a greater load carrying capacity and higher safety. The new model carries twice as much cargo as the previous model and is equipped with partitions to give users more flexible storage space.
The car is also equipped with a temperature-controlled compartment to ensure that the goods are at the right temperature. In addition, it is equipped with external airbags and multi-mode sensing kits, including cameras, lidar and thermal imaging cameras, which can fully perceive the surrounding environment and greatly protect the safety of roads and pedestrians.
It is understood that Nuro was founded in Silicon Valley in 2016 by Zhu Jiajun and Dave Ferguson, former chief engineers of Google's self-driving team, the company focuses on the development of autonomous trucks, and has launched two generations of autonomous delivery vehicles for delivery services in scenarios such as restaurants and grocery stores.
To date, Nuro has successfully completed pilot automated delivery runs in communities in Texas, Arizona, and California.