When your pizza comes in a driverless car by Anna Colomer

When your pizza comes in a driverless car

“Your pizza will arrive in less than 30 minutes in a driverless car”.

When do you think this statement will become real? In 5 years? In 10? In 20? Or maybe you think it will never happen?

Let me tell you the truth: It’s already happening! There are people in Ann Arbor (Michigan) that have experienced that.

What has made this possible is the collaboration between Ford and Domino’s Pizza with the aim to test pizza deliveries using a self-driving Ford Fusion sedan. This trial started this September and consists in offering, to some randomly assigned Domino’s clients, the possibility to receive their orders in a driverless car.

It’s clearly seen that this testing has benefits for both companies. While Ford looks for how its technology works and how to adapt it to the different possible clients, Domino’s becomes the first one to test this system in its sector, being able to see their customers’ reactions and, therefore, obtaining a competitive advantage over its competitors.

But, the main question is: How does it work?

Ford has provided a self-driving car able to scan the road with radars and cameras, detecting the traffic lights as well as a closely person’s presence, so ensuring car’s safety.

When a pizza is ready to go, it’s introduced in an oven that has been installed in the rear window of the car specifically for this Domino’s trial, facilitating the maintenance of the food’s temperature and being large enough to hold five pizzas and four side orders.

The pizza is coming. And the client knows it. He will be alerted by text messages when the car is nearing their home and when it arrives, but he also can look for the real situation of the car through the Domino’s Tracker app.

Once the client knows that the car has arrived, he needs to walk outside his home to receive the order. A read arrow on the car saying “start here” directs him to a touch screen, where entering a key (that consists on the last four digits of the customer’s phone number) is needed in order to get the window open.

Tachan!!! Your pizza is there, ready to be eaten, and you haven’t interacted with any person.

Actually, we should remark that, during this testing, there will be three persons inside the car: a driver to take over in case of a malfunction, a Ford engineer to monitor the electronics and a Domino’s employee in the back to observe the customer’s reactions.  However, the windows will be heavily tinted, so the customers can’t see them, and they have been instructed not to interact with people at all, making the experience as realistic as possible.

Summing up, we have a driverless car that it’s already making home deliveries. It’s just a trial, it’s true, but it won’t take too long to become a reality in our daily life, along with other new delivery ways, as drones. Companies should be aware of that, because delivery managing will have to be quickly updated for the enterprises to survive in such a huge competitive world.

Because of all this, collaboration among companies, as the one we have seen in this case, will be crucial, as long as very different capabilities are needed and it’s almost impossible for one company to have them all.

To conclude, I leave you with a question: Is science-fiction here?

If you want to see the performance of the Ford driverless car for the Domino’s trial, check the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hANXIPxN1ME