In June, we announced our partnership with Kroger to redefine the grocery customer experience for Americans by piloting an on-road, fully autonomous delivery service. Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of that service on August 16th, at Fry’s Food in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Scottsdale stood out as a perfect community for our pilot. Mayor Lane and the city of Scottsdale have welcomed our vision for transforming local commerce. The weather and topography of the area are favorable for testing. Lastly, Kroger, through its Fry’s Food division, is deeply embedded in the community.
Beginning today, our self-driving fleet of Priuses will be on the road delivering groceries to Fry’s customers in the 85257 zip code. Simply go to Frysfood.com or the Fry’s Food mobile app to shop for groceries and select a delivery window. Since self-driving delivery vehicles are a new concept for many, this phase of the pilot is very important. We will learn how customers interact with the vehicles in real-time, and be focused on identifying further improvement opportunities.
Learning motivated us to begin the pilot with our self-driving Prius fleet. It shares many software and hardware systems with our custom vehicle, the R1. So while we complete the R1’s final certification and testing, the Priuses will be completing deliveries and helping us improve the overall service.
We’re proud of this first step toward self-driving vehicle delivery, and we‘re already hard at work on what’s next. The R1 will be rolling into Scottsdale this fall — transforming local commerce one bag of groceries at a time.
Learn more about the Arizona pilot.
