New Autonomous Vehicle Design Ditches Side Mirrors and Windshields
Nuro has become the first autonomous vehicle company to receive exemption from federal safety standards.
Modern automobiles come with certain expectations: a steering wheel, side windows, windshields, things like that. Self-driving cars don’t need these things, of course, because they have their own sensors and hardware to handle perception and control on the roads.
Even so, these things are required in the U.S. by the federal government. At least, they usually are. Nuro has changed all of that by being the first self-driving vehicle company to receive an exemption from those standards. Side windows and windshields aren’t the only things missing, either.
Nuro’s R2 Delivery Car is a Big Win For Autonomous Vehicles
Nuro is a self-driving vehicle startup founded in 2016 by Dave Ferguson and Jiajun Zhu, both of whom worked as Principal Engineers for Waymo prior to this new venture.
Their latest vehicle design, the R2, is an autonomous delivery vehicle that has two compartments for goods like groceries, and no steering wheel, seats, windshields, or side windows.
The fact that it doesn’t transport people means that it had an easier time removing these common features. It also falls into the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) category for low-speed vehicles, so it won’t go faster than 25 mph.
US Secretary of Transportation, Elaine Chao, elaborated on these things in a press release from the NHTSA:
“Since this is a low-speed self-driving delivery vehicle, certain features that the Department traditionally required — such as mirrors and a windshield for vehicles carrying drivers — no longer make sense.”
Over the course of two years, Nuro is permitted to put 5,000 R2 cars onto public roads, with the caveat that they must update the NHTSA with performance updates, and must also participate in community outreach efforts in locations where the vehicles are deployed.
Nuro will begin testing the R2 on public roads in Houston, Texas before transitioning into deliveries. Compared to the R1, this new model has more storage space and a more durable design.
The goal of Nuro as a company is to take humans out of deliveries, thereby removing the need to charge fees for the service. Instead, the company could rely on fees charged to businesses and allow consumers to receive deliveries free from additional charges.
A Major Step For The Automotive Industry
There’s something unnerving about standing outside a vehicle that’s missing basic features like the ones gone from the R2 design. I experienced it first hand at CES 2020, and steering wheels weren’t the only thing missing from the convention either.
Since these things aren’t needed, they streamline the design of the R2. The exemption for Nuro also paves the way for other vehicle manufacturers to pursue similar goals.
As it turns out, GM is already in talks to receive a similar exemption. The key difference here is that these vehicles will transport people and drive faster than 25 mph, so taking out the steering wheel here is a much larger issue.
All of this brings to mind an episode of Black Mirror (and, honestly, what modern events don’t?) entitled Crocodile, which, among other things, involves a collision between a pedestrian and an autonomous pizza delivery vehicle.
It’s concepts like this that remind us just how far autonomous vehicles have left to go before they’re widely accepted by the government and the general public. Even so, this exemption is a worthwhile step forward for the industry as a whole and will no doubt lead to more in the future.
