Distributed Energy Resources, Energy Efficiency  -  January 18, 2022

Nuro to Produce Third Gen Delivery EV

Nuro, an autonomous vehicle company, announced its partnership with BYD Co., Ltd. to begin producing the company’s third-generation electric autonomous delivery vehicle. The partnership is expected to scale Nuro’s more affordable, eco-friendly, and convenient services. 

Nuro’s third-generation autonomous delivery vehicle will feature greater payload and new safety technologies.  The company has launched two generations of autonomous vehicles, introduced delivery service with companies such as Domino’s, Kroger, and 7-Eleven, and announced a multi-year partnership with FedEx. Nuro was founded in 2016 by Jiajun Zhu and Dave Ferguson, former principal engineers of Google’s self-driving car team. 

“BYD is one of the largest OEM networks of electric vehicles in the world, and we are thrilled to partner with them to help us move one step closer to scaled commercial operations,” said Jiajun Zhu, Nuro co-founder and CEO in a statement. “We look forward to transforming the hardware components of BYD’s globally sourced electric vehicle platform into innovative autonomous vehicles capable of operating on public roads at our new facility here in America. Through our partnership with BYD, we plan to produce autonomous vehicles at scale that can improve road safety, air quality, and overall access to goods.”

In this project, BYD is jointly working with Nuro on vehicle development and is responsible for vehicle manufacturing and initial vehicle testing and provides hardware like the Blade Battery, electric motors, electronic controls, and displays for human-machine interaction. Nuro integrates technologies such as autonomous driving, control modules and sensors. BYD will finish assembly of the hardware platform at its Lancaster plant in the U.S. using globally sourced components. Nuro will then complete the vehicle manufacturing process by installing and testing the autonomy systems that will make the platform capable of operation at the company’s new facilities in southern Nevada.