Amazon Forms Team to Focus on Driverless Technology
Amazon Forms Team to Focus on Driverless Technology
Group could help retailer deliver packages quickly as it
builds out its supply chain and logistics network
By Laura Stevens and
Tim Higgins Updated April 24, 2017 8:03 a.m. ET
Amazon.com Inc. has created a team focused on
driverless-vehicle technology to help navigate the retail giant’s role in the
shake-up of transportation, according to people briefed on the matter.
Amazon quietly formed the team, which has comprised about
a dozen employees, more than a year ago as part of its broader ambition to
transport more of its goods itself. For now, Amazon doesn’t intend to build a
fleet of vehicles, according to these people. Instead, the team serves as an
in-house think tank to figure out how to leverage autonomous vehicles.
The initiative, still in its early phases, could help the
Seattle-based company overcome one of its biggest logistical complications and
costs: delivering packages quickly. Amazon could use autonomous vehicles
including trucks, forklifts and drones to move goods. In addition, driverless
cars could play a broader role in the future of last-mile delivery, enabling
easier package drop-offs, experts say.
Many details of the team’s work, such as the extent of
its progress, couldn’t be determined. An Amazon spokeswoman declined to
comment.
Amazon hosted an event last week titled “Radical
Transportation Salon” to discuss the future of transportation with other
companies, the people said. The event, spearheaded by H.B. Siegel, whose
responsibilities at Amazon include new ideas, in part targeted experts in
autonomous vehicles. It wasn’t clear which companies attended.
“Amazon has a plan in place to shake up the entire supply
chain as we know it today,” said Dave Sullivan, an automotive analyst for
consultancy AutoPacific Inc.
Tech giants and auto makers are in a race to develop
autonomous-vehicle technology that, while unproven, has the potential to shake
up what Deloitte Consulting estimates to be the $2 trillion in annual revenue
tied to the automotive industry. Waymo LLC, the self-driving tech unit of
Google parent Alphabet Inc.; General Motors Co. , Tesla Inc. and Uber
Technologies Inc. are among the many global companies aiming to put
self-driving vehicles on the road in the near future. They are joined by
Silicon Valley startups eager to beat these bigger companies to market and
players such as Apple Inc., whose intentions haven’t become clear.
There have been early signs of Amazon’s interest in
autonomous-vehicle technology. In January, Amazon won a patent for coordinating
autonomous vehicles in a roadway, earlier reported by technology news website
Recode. A job posting on Amazon’s site calls for a research scientist “to
develop future mobility and transportation systems” at Amazon Robotics, which
largely focuses on the company’s warehousing technology.
Over the past few years, Amazon has been building out its
supply chain and logistics network, aiming to deliver more of its own packages.
It also envisions transporting goods on a large scale for other companies, one
day competing with delivery giants United Parcel Service Inc. and FedEx Corp.,
according to people familiar with the matter.
The company is leasing 40 planes and has bought thousands
of branded truck trailers. Tractor trailers have long been considered a likely
first target for implementing widespread driverless technology, in part due to
how regularly they drive the same stretches of highway. Amazon is interested in
autonomous trucking, according to the people.
Humans have a 10-hour limit when driving, but a
self-driving truck could drive through the night, said Alex Rodrigues,
co-founder of Embark, a startup that aims to develop technology to enable
long-haul trucks to operate on the highway. “So instead of taking four days to
drive coast to coast, it takes a day and a half.”
The biggest portion of Amazon’s spending and energy has
gone toward another type of autonomous means of transport: drones. That
initiative, announced in 2013, is further along and has a bigger team dedicated
to the effort. It is expected to continue to be the major focus of the company,
according to the people. Drones could communicate or pair up with driverless
vehicles, for example, to coordinate deliveries.
In December, Amazon tested a commercial drone delivery in
the U.K., but regulations in the U.S. make it unlikely it would become a major
delivery option domestically soon.
Amazon could see potential in linking self-driving
technology with its payments and services as cars become a way to place and
receive deliveries. Its voice-command software, Alexa, which has been
successful in its Echo speakers, is being used in cars. Ford Motor Co., Daimler
AG’s Mercedes-Benz and others have announced ways to integrate Alexa into their
vehicles, enabling drivers to tap into some functions from home, such as
starting the engine and unlocking doors.
In January, when German auto maker BMW AG demonstrated a
semiautonomous 5 Series sedan in Las Vegas that enabled the driver to go hands
free in certain scenarios, it partnered with Amazon to demonstrate how a
customer could order chocolate while driving and stop to pick it up from an
Amazon delivery person.
Amazon has also partnered with Deutsche Post AG’s DHL and
Audi in Germany to test making package deliveries to car trunks.
Write to Laura Stevens at laura.stevens@wsj.com and Tim
Higgins at Tim.Higgins@WSJ.com
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