Nuro’s shiny, minimalist appliance on wheels doesn’t have doors or windows to speak of, because it will be carrying packages—not people.
As every major automaker and dozens of tech companies race to replace drivers in Uber cars and taxi fleets, Nuro is ignoring humans altogether and steering for Amazon.com Inc., United Parcel Service Inc. and any retailer looking to build its e-commerce business. “We realized we could make it possible to deliver anything, anytime, anywhere,” said co-founder Dave Ferguson. “We like to call it a local teleportation service.”…
However, Nuro, by all accounts a scrappy newcomer, has some street cred. Co-founders Jiajun Zhu (who goes by “Jay-Z”) was one of the first engineers working on Waymo, the self-driving unit launched by Google (now Alphabet Inc.) Ferguson, who has a Ph.D. in robotics from Carnegie Mellon, joined him there in 2011.
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