Kroger tries driverless cars for grocery deliveries

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — At a time when big-box retailers are trying to offer the same conveniences as their online competitors, the biggest U.S. grocery chain is testing the use of driverless cars to deliver groceries in a Phoenix suburb.

Kroger’s pilot program launched Thursday morning with a robotic vehicle parked outside one of its Fry’s supermarkets in Scottsdale. A store clerk loaded the back seat with full grocery bags. A man was in the driver’s seat and another was in the front passenger seat with a laptop. Both were there to monitor the car’s performance.

Under the self-driving service, shoppers can order same-day or next-day delivery online or on a mobile app for a flat rate of about $6. After the order is placed, a driverless vehicle will deliver the A Toyota Prius equipped with self-driving equipment by Nuro parks outside a Fry’s supermarket in Scottsdale, Ariz., as the store’s parent, Kroger, begins testing grocery deliveries made by autonomous vehicles. The Prius will be have a human inside to monitor its performance.

groceries curbside, requiring customers to be present to fetch them. The vehicles will probably be opened with a numeric code.

Currently, Kroger is using Toyota Priuses. During the next phase of testing in the fall, deliveries will be made

by a completely autonomous vehicle with no human aboard.

Cincinnati-based Kroger Co. is partnering with Nuro, a Silicon Valley startup founded by two engineers who worked on autonomous vehicles at Google.

“Our goal is to save people time while operating safely and learning how we can further improve the experience,” Nuro co-founder Dave Ferguson said in a statement.

A Google autonomous vehicle project called Waymo began a similar pilot program last month at Walmart stores in Phoenix. In that case, selfdriving vehicles transport customers to and from their a Walmart to pick up grocery orders.

That is not the only venture Waymo has in metropolitan Phoenix. It also has been trying out a service where bus and light-rail riders can order an autonomous car to their nearest transit stop. Employees with Valley Metro, the agency that manages Phoenix-area transit lines, are currently serving as test riders. The project, begun this month, has Waymo employees gathering data from test drives, the agency said.