Self-driving cars appear to be the future of personal transport, but they could also be the future of takeaways.
Domino’s, the pizza chain famous for making pizza, because that’s what they make: pizza, are launching a trial in the US city Ann Arbor, Michigan, where randomly selected customers will have their pizza delivered by an autonomous car.
In partnership with Ford, some lucky residents of Ann Arbor could have their pizza delivered to them courtesy of the future, in the shape of a Ford Fusion Hybrid Autonomous Research Vehicle. Before we get too excited, the cars will be manually operated to begin with, but the hope is that customers will receive their pizza completely autonomously in the near future.
The cars will be equipped with a special warming oven, called the Domino’s Heatwave Compartment, which will keep customers’ pizzas toasty-warm, which they can collect by opening the car with a unique code sent to their phone, through which they can also track the movements of their pizza.
“We’re interested to learn what people think about this type of delivery,” said Russell Weiner, president of Domino’s USA.
“The majority of our questions are about the last 50 feet of the delivery experience. For instance, how will customers react to coming outside to get their food?
“We need to make sure the interface is clear and simple. We need to understand if a customer’s experience is different if the car is parked in the driveway versus next to the curb.
“All of our testing research is focused on our goal to someday make deliveries with self-driving vehicles as seamless and customer-friendly as possible.”
Who can say if driverless delivery will catch on. On the plus side, autonomous cars don’t need to stop for breaks or take holidays or any of that nonsense. On the downside, they will one day rise up and enslave us all. Is it worth it for a pizza? Yes. Yes it is.
