Investigative Unit

Uber Eats now uses Waymo's self-driving cars to offer driverless deliveries

The on-demand meal delivery service just launched a driverless car option in Phoenix

NBC Universal, Inc.

A new feature from Mountain View-based Waymo is catching a lot of attention. They’re already doing driverless taxis, and now, food deliveries. But it’s not happening in the Bay Area. NBC Bay Area’s Senior Investigative Reporter Bigad Shaban has more.

The driverless car company Waymo has partnered with Uber Eats to debut a driverless meal delivery service in select neighborhoods in Phoenix, which includes Chandler, Mesa, and Tempe. 

Customers using the Uber Eats app, who order from one of the roughly five participating restaurants, will receive a notification that their order may be delivered by an autonomous vehicle.  While users will have an opportunity to opt out, those who are willing to try out the new feature will be able to use their phones to unlock the vehicle’s trunk to grab their meal once the driverless car arrives.

According to Uber and Waymo, the autonomous vehicle option won’t cost customers anything extra.  In fact, the new feature could prove to be cheaper than the standard delivery person option since there’s no tipping the autonomous vehicles.

Waymo, Google’s sister company, has been shuttling passengers with its autonomous cars since 2017, when it first launched the service in Phoenix. Waymo has since dispatched driverless fleets to San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin.  The company’s partnership with Uber, however, marks Waymo's first official foray into the meal delivery business. 

Uber has been offering driverless deliveries over the past two years by partnering with other driverless car companies.  With its new relationship with Waymo, Uber Eats now offers autonomous vehicle deliveries in seven cities:

  • Mountain View, California
  • West Hollywood, California
  • Santa Monica, California
  • Miami, Florida
  • Fairfax, Virginia
  • Phoenix, Arizona
  • Tokyo, Japan

While Uber and Waymo hope to expand the service to other cities, neither company could say when or if the service would become available in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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