Magna has successfully developed and is piloting a novel last-mile delivery solution for urban environments. The solution integrates a purpose-built, on-road, lightweight, electric robot; Magna-developed low-speed autonomous driving system; and delivery software.

With the goal of reducing last mile delivery costs and carbon emissions in cities significantly, the Magna new mobility team built a full-stack solution, from the ground up, leveraging hardware and software from its automotive products.

The Magna-developed robot was launched on a pilot basis with a pizza restaurant in the Detroit area in March 2022. Since then, it has delivered hundreds of pizzas to residential and commercial locations near the restaurant. Magna is using data and consumer feedback to refine the service.

Magna’s robot can travel at speeds of up to 20 mph on public streets and the Magna-developed low-speed autonomous driving system uses cameras, radar, LIDAR and other hardware.

Expanding into the growing world of new mobility is a key part of our ‘Go Forward’ strategy that takes Magna beyond its existing technical strength in automotive and vehicle systems, and into entirely new markets and business models. The next phase in this pilot program is to apply our learnings to further refine the solution for a broader range of applications and use cases, scale, and unlocking innovative new business models.—Matteo Del Sorbo, Executive Vice President, Magna International and Global Lead for Magna New Mobility

This development and pilot program follows two additional new mobility announcements recently made by Magna:

Expansion into the fast-growing micromobility market through investment of $77 million in Yulu, India’s largest electrified shared mobility provider, and scaling the battery swapping infrastructure required to help accelerate the electrification of India’s two-wheeler fleet; and

Collaboration with Cartken, an autonomous robotics company that has developed autonomous sidewalk delivery and materials handling robots, for a robot-as-a-service business model with contract manufacturing. This includes Magna’s use of Cartken’s platform for different applications.

Posted on 16 September 2022 in Electric (Battery), Market Background | Permalink | Comments (1)

It won't be cheap if they are putting Lidar on it. Probably cheaper to use a guy on an electric bicycle with a big reflective bag. However, it would make a very good robot suicide bomber with 10-50 kg of explosives in it.

Posted by: mahonj | 16 September 2022 at 01:51 AM

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