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Autonomous ride-hailing startup Nuro, valued at more than $8.6 billion, is closing its Phoenix facility as it shifts its business strategy away from the desert metropolis to the San Francisco Bay Area and Houston.
According to an internal email seen by TechCrunch, Life has told employees that the Phoenix Depot location will close on Oct. 1. It will continue to operate out of its Tempe, Arizona facility and corporate employees will not be affected. However, several autonomous vehicle operators (AVO) in Phoenix have been out of business as a result.
With Phoenix no longer on our business roadmap for the foreseeable future, we will consolidate our resources to focus on our core deployment locations in the Bay Area and Houston. “We will immediately cease operations on the road in Phoenix and close the depot through October 1,” the internal email said.
A Life spokeswoman confirmed the Phoenix layoffs, saying Life has shifted its focus from on-road operations to teleoperations in Arizona. The business strategy “includes eliminating our Phoenix depot and focusing on tele-operations in Tempe, Arizona,” the spokeswoman said in an email, adding that Life will still be based in Arizona.
Living has been operating in Arizona for years, a presence that began in 2018 with the acquisition of Kroger Co., the grocery retailer that owns and operates King Supers, Fry’s and Pick ‘n Save stores. The Scottsdale, Arizona-based pilot initially used a modified Toyota Prius sedan and transitioned to a first-generation bot called the R1 vehicle. As Living’s partnership with Kroger expands in Houston, the Arizona pilot has ended.
Nuno introduced the R2 in February 2020, a second-gen bot designed and assembled in the US in collaboration with Michigan-based Rush Enterprises that is equipped with lidar, radar and a camera to give the driver a 360-degree view of its surroundings. .
Now it’s on to the third generation robot, simply called Life. In the year Unveiled in January 2022, the “Nuro” (pictured below) will be produced in partnership with BYD North America.
Image Credits: Only
These vehicles are designed to transport groceries and other goods, not people. As life moved out of the Prius and into the custom-built vehicle, it had to strengthen the telecoupling system that would allow humans to remotely monitor, communicate and, if necessary, give instructions to the bots.
Three of the affected Phoenix employees have chosen to resign, two are helping to close the Lifetime Phoenix depot, and the rest will join the team in Tempe, Lifetime said.
The company laid off four employees in Houston and three employees at its Mountain View, California, facility.
“As part of our ongoing strategy to take a more focused approach to our operations, unfortunately, we have made the difficult decision to let our four Houston (non-AVO) employees go and offer them all severance packages. A spokesperson for the living company told TechCrunch that all affected employees have been notified in person and in person.
No other offers were made in the company. As of January 2022, the company employs more than 1,200 people.
Living Focus includes partnerships with several corporations, including Walmart and CVS, in Houston and the Bay Area, where the company is headquartered.
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