Ups and Downs for Self-Driving Cars During the Pandemic

On April 7, the California Department of Motor Vehicles (CA DMV) issued a permit to Nuro "authorizing the company to test two driverless vehicles on surface streets within specific, designated parts of Santa Clara and San Mateo counties [in Northern California]," according to a CA DMV press release. Chris Teale reports the news of Nuro's new driverless presence on the streets of the Bay Area. 

Nuro expanded driverless operations in Texas at the end of the year, testing driverless delivery services for Walmart. But when surveying the larger landscape of the industry, the company's latest advancements don't necessarily indicate that the coronavirus pandemic is accelerating the adoption of autonomous vehicles technology. The developments for the autonomous vehicle industry during the pandemic has been a mixed bag of good news and bad.

On one hand, Nuro isn't alone in getting a chance to expand its testing of autonomous vehicles operations in the last month of public health and economic crisis. The NAVYA project's autonomous vehicles were already testing in Florida, but the coronavirus has offered a chance for that company to expand operations to deliver medical supplies at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, according to an article by Sebastian Blanco. Also, numerous writers have taken the temperature of the industry and read the crisis as an opportunity for autonomous vehicle technology. Here's a sample:

• Self-driving cars proving helpful during coronavirus lockdowns (Motor Authority, April 8, 2020)
• It took a coronavirus outbreak for self-driving cars to become more appealing (Mashable, April 1, 2020)
• Despite setbacks, coronavirus could hasten the adoption of autonomous vehicles and delivery robots (VentureBeat, March 20, 2020)

On the other hand, Waymo suspended its operation of autonomous vehicles at the outset of the crisis in March. An article by Joann Muller offers an opposing position to those expressed in the articles listed above, writing that the coronavirus has further revealed the lack of a viable business model for driverless technology.