Why Nuro thinks being a robotaxi ‘second mover’ gives it an advantage
Why Nuro thinks being a robotaxi ‘second mover’ gives it an advantage
为什么 Nuro 认为成为自动驾驶出租车领域的“后来者”反而是一种优势
Nuro may be late to robotaxis, but it believes it can find success by learning from Waymo’s mistakes. 尽管 Nuro 进入自动驾驶出租车领域的时间较晚，但它相信通过吸取 Waymo 的经验教训，自己能够取得成功。
Waymo is the undisputed leader in the robotaxi space, operating a fleet of over 3,000 driverless cars in at least 10 cities across the US. A number of companies, including Tesla, Zoox, Avride, and Motional, are racing to catch up with the Alphabet-owned firm. But what if being No. 2 was actually better? Waymo 是自动驾驶出租车领域无可争议的领导者，在美国至少 10 个城市运营着一支超过 3,000 辆无人驾驶汽车的车队。包括特斯拉、Zoox、Avride 和 Motional 在内的多家公司正竞相追赶这家隶属于 Alphabet 的公司。但如果“第二名”其实更好呢？
Nuro, the delivery robot company created by veterans of Google’s self-driving car project, thinks it has a decent shot at occupying the slot. After pivoting from delivery to robotaxis in 2024, Nuro struck a deal with Uber and Lucid to deploy tens of thousands of robotaxis all across the US — netting itself hundreds of millions of dollars in investment from Uber in the process. Nuro plans on launching the service in San Francisco later this year. And earlier this month, it was granted the first of several permits it will need in order to launch that service. Nuro 是一家由谷歌自动驾驶汽车项目资深人士创立的配送机器人公司，它认为自己很有机会占据这个位置。在 2024 年从配送业务转向自动驾驶出租车业务后，Nuro 与 Uber 和 Lucid 达成协议，将在全美部署数万辆自动驾驶出租车，并在此过程中获得了 Uber 数亿美元的投资。Nuro 计划于今年晚些时候在旧金山推出该服务。本月初，它已获得了启动该服务所需的多项许可中的第一项。
It’s almost better for Nuro that Waymo is scaling at the pace that it is, said Dave Ferguson, cofounder and co-CEO of Nuro. Its early successes, as well as its stumbles and missteps, then become fodder for Nuro’s engineers to reassess and reevaluate, with the goal of answering the question: Could we have done better? Nuro 联合创始人兼联席首席执行官 Dave Ferguson 表示，Waymo 目前的扩张速度对 Nuro 来说反而更有利。Waymo 的早期成功，以及它的磕绊和失误，都成为了 Nuro 工程师重新评估和审视的素材，目标是回答这样一个问题：我们是否能做得更好？
“There is a lot of value in this sort of classic second mover perspective,” Ferguson said in a recent interview. “We have a huge amount of respect for Waymo … In some of the rare cases where they’re having challenges, [Nuro is] using those to kick the tires on our system and make sure that it would behave in a way that we’re comfortable and proud of as well.” “这种经典的‘后来者’视角非常有价值，”Ferguson 在最近的一次采访中说道。“我们非常尊重 Waymo……在他们遇到挑战的极少数情况下，Nuro 会利用这些案例来测试我们自己的系统，确保它的表现能达到让我们感到舒适和自豪的水平。”
The fact that Ferguson has respect for Waymo isn’t a surprise. He got his start at Google’s self-driving car project that would go on to become Waymo, along with Nuro cofounder and co-CEO Jiajun Zhu. The two left Google in 2016 to found Nuro, first as a robot delivery service, and now as an aspiring robotaxi operator. Nuro also aims to license its autonomous driving technology to outside companies, including car companies that want to use it for advanced driver-assist systems and personally owned autonomous vehicles — though it has yet to announce any deals. Ferguson 尊重 Waymo 并不令人意外。他和 Nuro 的另一位联合创始人兼联席首席执行官朱佳俊（Jiajun Zhu）都是从谷歌自动驾驶汽车项目（即后来的 Waymo）起步的。两人于 2016 年离开谷歌创立了 Nuro，最初从事机器人配送服务，现在则立志成为自动驾驶出租车运营商。Nuro 还计划将其自动驾驶技术授权给外部公司，包括那些希望将其用于高级驾驶辅助系统和个人自动驾驶汽车的汽车制造商——尽管目前尚未宣布任何交易。
To be sure, Nuro is late to the robotaxi party. While Nuro was handling groceries, Waymo was handling passengers. But Ferguson argues that Nuro’s technology is easily transferable to robotaxis — even if its passenger experience is still zero. 可以肯定的是，Nuro 进入自动驾驶出租车领域确实晚了。当 Nuro 在忙于运送杂货时，Waymo 已经在运送乘客了。但 Ferguson 认为，Nuro 的技术可以轻松迁移到自动驾驶出租车上——即使它在乘客体验方面目前还是零经验。
That’s where his “second mover” theory comes into play. Unlike Waymo, which had to discover many operational challenges firsthand, Nuro believes it will benefit from watching the Alphabet-owned company operate a large-scale robotaxi service before fully launching its own. 这就是他的“后来者”理论发挥作用的地方。与 Waymo 不同，后者必须亲身发现许多运营挑战，Nuro 相信，通过观察这家 Alphabet 旗下的公司运营大规模自动驾驶出租车服务，自己将在全面推出服务前从中受益。
To that end, Ferguson wants Nuro’s robotaxi service to be broadly useful when it first launches. He suggested that some features, like freeway driving, may arrive later, but that the launch will not follow an ultra-incremental playbook where the company initially handles only certain scenarios before slowly adding more complex ones over time. That said, Nuro doesn’t plan to include “the entire South Bay on day one,” Ferguson said. 为此，Ferguson 希望 Nuro 的自动驾驶出租车服务在首次推出时就能具备广泛的实用性。他表示，一些功能（如高速公路驾驶）可能会稍后推出，但发布过程不会遵循那种“极度渐进”的策略，即公司最初只处理特定场景，然后随着时间推移缓慢增加更复杂的场景。话虽如此，Ferguson 也表示，Nuro 并不打算在“第一天就覆盖整个南湾”。
“The plan is very much on day one for this to be a very useful service,” he said. “This is not going to be only protected intersections, and then slowly we add unprotected … It’s going to be a very broad [operational design domain] to begin with.” “我们的计划是让这项服务在第一天就非常实用，”他说。“它不会仅仅局限于受保护的交叉路口，然后才慢慢增加不受保护的路口……从一开始，它就会拥有一个非常广泛的（运营设计域）。”
The Uber-Lucid-Nuro robotaxi service is unique, insofar as it involves three distinct companies: a rideshare network, an automaker, and an autonomous vehicle startup. Under the arrangement, Nuro develops the sensing and compute stack and works closely with Lucid to integrate that technology into the vehicle, the Lucid Gravity SUV. The integration happens directly on Lucid’s production line, meaning the vehicles leave the factory already equipped with Level 4 autonomy. Those completed vehicles are then sold to Uber, which becomes the owner and operator of the fleet. The rideshare company will manage the depots and operational infrastructure associated with running the service. Uber-Lucid-Nuro 的自动驾驶出租车服务非常独特，因为它涉及三家不同的公司：网约车平台、汽车制造商和自动驾驶初创公司。根据协议，Nuro 负责开发传感和计算堆栈，并与 Lucid 密切合作，将该技术集成到 Lucid Gravity SUV 中。这种集成直接在 Lucid 的生产线上完成，意味着车辆出厂时就已具备 L4 级自动驾驶能力。这些成品车随后被出售给 Uber，由 Uber 成为车队的所有者和运营商。这家网约车公司将负责管理与服务运营相关的车库和基础设施。
Uber will also manage remote assistance for the vehicles, Ferguson said. Remote assistance has come under fire lately, with some members of Congress demanding Waymo and others be more forthcoming about their use of offsite workers to oversee the vehicles. Ferguson said this has led to the spread of misinformation about companies using remote workers to actively control the robotaxis. What they really do, he said, is answer questions and provide prompts to help the vehicles when they get confused. Ferguson 表示，Uber 还将负责车辆的远程辅助工作。远程辅助最近受到了抨击，一些国会议员要求 Waymo 等公司更透明地披露其使用远程工作人员监督车辆的情况。Ferguson 表示，这导致了关于公司使用远程人员主动控制自动驾驶出租车的错误信息传播。他说，他们真正做的是在车辆遇到困惑时回答问题并提供提示，以帮助车辆脱困。
“The view that the public probably jumps to when they’re told remote assistance of self-driving vehicles is someone in a dark room driving a car around like they’re playing a video game,” he said. “I think that is pretty far from how remote assistance typically works.” “当公众听到自动驾驶汽车的远程辅助时，他们脑海中浮现的画面可能是一个人坐在暗室里，像玩电子游戏一样驾驶汽车，”他说。“我认为这与远程辅助的实际工作方式相去甚远。”
Nuro’s long-term goal is to build the most capable AI driving system possible, with the intention of putting it to work in a variety of ways, including delivery, he said. To that end, Nuro’s longevity in the field ensures that the company can apply the lessons from its older, more rules-based machine learning systems, as well as its current end-to-end learning models that produce a more naturalistic driving style. According to Ferguson, that legacy is critical even as the industry transitions toward more AI-heavy approaches. 他说，Nuro 的长期目标是构建最强大的 AI 驾驶系统，并打算将其应用于包括配送在内的多种场景。为此，Nuro 在该领域的长期积累确保了公司能够应用其早期基于规则的机器学习系统的经验，以及当前能产生更自然驾驶风格的端到端学习模型。Ferguson 认为，即使行业正在向更依赖 AI 的方向转型，这种技术积淀依然至关重要。