The driverless car company Waymo has partnered with Uber Eats to debut a driverless meal delivery service in select neighborhoods in Phoenix, which includes Chandler, Mesa, and Tempe.
Customers using the Uber Eats app, who order from one of the roughly five participating restaurants, will receive a notification that their order may be delivered by an autonomous vehicle. While users will have an opportunity to opt out, those who are willing to try out the new feature will be able to use their phones to unlock the vehicle’s trunk to grab their meal once the driverless car arrives.
According to Uber and Waymo, the autonomous vehicle option won’t cost customers anything extra. In fact, the new feature could prove to be cheaper than the standard delivery person option since there’s no tipping the autonomous vehicles.
Waymo, Google’s sister company, has been shuttling passengers with its autonomous cars since 2017, when it first launched the service in Phoenix. Waymo has since dispatched driverless fleets to San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin. The company’s partnership with Uber, however, marks Waymo's first official foray into the meal delivery business.
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Uber has been offering driverless deliveries over the past two years by partnering with other driverless car companies. With its new relationship with Waymo, Uber Eats now offers autonomous vehicle deliveries in seven cities:
- Mountain View, California
- West Hollywood, California
- Santa Monica, California
- Miami, Florida
- Fairfax, Virginia
- Phoenix, Arizona
- Tokyo, Japan
While Uber and Waymo hope to expand the service to other cities, neither company could say when or if the service would become available in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Watch our entire investigative series
- Part 1: Driverless cars seek San Francisco expansion despite worries tech is unsafe
- Part 2: CPUC votes to expand driverless car operations in San Francisco
- Part 3: San Francisco city attorney files motion to pump the brakes on driverless cars
- Part 4: Google's Waymo says insurance data shows its driverless cars are safer than humans
- Part 5: Hit-and-run driver strikes pedestrian, tossing her into path of Cruise car in San Francisco
- Part 6: Driverless trucks and robot deliveries promise fewer traffic jams than robotaxis
- Part 7: Cruise says its robotaxis can now better detect emergency vehicles
- Part 8: California DMV orders Cruise's driverless cars off the road
- Part 9: Driverless cars immune from traffic tickets in California under current laws
- Part 10: GM's Cruise lays off nearly 25% of its workforce
- Part 11: Waymo's driverless cars surpass 7 million miles, but are they safer than human drivers?
- Part 12: Driverless cars immune from traffic tickets in California under current laws
- Part 13: Cruise probe blames poor internet, bad leadership, and "flawed" decisions for company's woes
- Part 14: Driverless Cruise car accused of almost hitting 7 yr old after similar close call involving kids
- Part 15: Cruise offers to pay $112,500 in fines to settle claims driverless car company misled regulators
- Part 16: Uber Eats now uses Waymo Self-Driving cars to offer driverless deliveries
