Ford has retrofitted a fleet of its Transit vans with touchpad-accessible lockers, from which Postmates customers with the right access code can retrieve their food. The lockers are varying sizes to accommodate different types of deliveries. (Some even have cupholders.) Audio prompts and light displays are used to guide customers to the appropriate locker.
The pilot is underway in Miami and Miami Beach, with “over 70 businesses” participating, including restaurants and hardware stores, the company said in a Medium post. The vans are manually driven by human drivers for now, as Ford is just using them to test different methods of food delivery. Eventually, the automaker says it will deploy a fully self-driving delivery service by 2021. “Ultimately, we are testing how businesses and consumers interact with a self-driving vehicle,” Ford says.
More>>