Welcome to Uber Eats, robot car
Self-driving cars are making deliveries in Phoenix while other cities grapple with the effects of implementing minimum wages for human couriers
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It’s taken some time, but I no longer double-take every time I pull up next to a Waymo autonomous car in San Francisco. They’re currently fanned out across the city, ferrying people from one place to another. My children think they’re amazing and don’t understand why I find riding in one disconcerting; to them, it’s normal. To me, it’s still novel.
This week, Uber Eats started delivering some orders in Phoenix using Waymo’s autonomous vehicles, or AVs, in the lingo. Diners in Phoenix, Chandler, Mesa, and Tempe might receive their orders via driverless car from select merchants. When the car arrives, the diner has to meet it outside, using their phone to unlock the car and grab their food. Customers can opt in and out of the program, and they don’t have to tip the bots. (If they commit to a tip while placing the order, the tip is fully refunded.)
Uber’s been leaning into other people’s AV tech, but it once tried to build its own. Waymo joins a host of delivery bots from Serve Robotics, Cartken, Nuro, and Motional, all Uber Eats partners. In late 2020, Uber sold its self-driving unit to a company called Aurora, after investing more than $1 billion in the project. The company’s relationship with Waymo has evolved, too. In 2017, Waymo, which is owned by Google parent company Alphabet, sued Uber over allegedly stealing trade secrets. The pair settled a few days into the trial, which multiple media outlets described as “messy.” Later a former Google executive was sentenced to 18 months in prison for stealing trade secrets from Waymo and using them to build a self-driving trucking startup he later sold to Uber. (Anthony Levandowski, the former exec, was eventually pardoned by Donald Trump on his last day in office.) Whew.
It’s high drama because these are high stakes. Uber’s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has been clear on the company’s investment in and excitement about autonomous transportation and delivery tech. As recently as March, Khosrowshahi was touting its benefits, this time onstage with the mayor of Austin, Texas at this year’s SXSW festival.
At the same time, third-party delivery companies have been tussling with lawmakers over restrictions and regulations around delivery work.
Cities want to set minimum earnings for contracted delivery workers, but the apps say that external regulation makes it too expensive to operate. Now the apps are doing exactly what they said they would — raising prices for diners and reducing the number of contractors that can work at any given time.
In Seattle, a new minimum wage law for delivery drivers set hourly pay at $17. In response — as it has done elsewhere — Uber Eats added a $5 local operating surcharge to customers’ bills. After consumer backlash, the city is considering walking back the pay minimum. According to Uber, delivery drivers are waiting 30 percent longer for jobs, and orders are declining.
New York City’s delivery minimum wage law, contested by the delivery companies in court but ultimately upheld, has been causing friction between couriers and the large delivery services for months. An Uber spokesperson recently told Vox that nearly 6,000 couriers have lost access to Uber Eats; an additional 20,000 are waiting to be able to delivery food for Uber. Per Vox, “No one is happy about the delivery apps,” it reads. Not restaurants, not diners, not couriers.
New Yorkers place a reported 100 million food deliveries each year. That averages to close to 300,000 orders per day. It’s unlikely that human couriers will be replaced by robots in the nation’s largest city — or any of them — any time soon, but in a nation full of legitimate concerns about fair pay and a growing number of complaints about tip creep, It’s hard to imagine these bots as anything but an attractive addition to a third-party delivery company’s fleet.
What else?
Amazon is scaling back “just walk out” in favor of smart shopping carts inside Amazon Fresh stores. Here’s a reminder that sometimes artificial intelligence isn’t always completely artificially intelligent. Per reports, the ultimate success of “just walk out” hinged on 1,000 workers in India watching people shop. 700 out of 1,000 sales in the stores required human review; Amazon’s target for this was 50 per 1,000. The tech isn’t dead, though; Amazon will keep using it in smaller corner stores and UK grocers. — Business Insider
Taco Bell and Pizza Hut are going “AI-first.” What’s AI-first, you ask? According to Yum Brands’ chief technology officer, Joe Park, it means rethinking how every piece of technology inside the restaurant might operate, including an app that helps educate and train employees. Overall, the industry’s biggest hurdle to adopting new tech, Park says, is outdated and/or disparate solutions. — Wall Street Journal
DoorDash is testing a new benefits program in Pennsylvania. The company will match 4 percent of couriers’ pre-tip earnings and deposit them in a benefits account that can be used for retirement savings, paid time off, or healthcare. App worker advocates say 4 percent is not enough. DoorDash CEO Tony Xu says, “Instead of settling for the way it has always been done, we can continue to try new things and expand the safety net in ways that provide both flexibility and security.” — Philadelphia Inquirer