Autonomous vehicle startup Nuro and Kroger begin testing a grocery delivery service in Scottsdale, Arizona, starting today
Self-driving car startup Nuro is ready to put autonomous vehicles on the road in partnership with Kroger to deliver groceries in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Context & Ripple Effects
The Scottsdale pilot is the first on-road step of the Kroger-Nuro partnership announced in late June, which committed the largest US supermarket chain and the two-year-old self-driving startup to a driverless delivery service by fall. Starting testing today puts that timeline ahead of schedule — and makes Kroger the first major grocer with autonomous delivery actually running, not just announced.
First-order effects
- Scottsdale shoppers can now receive Kroger grocery orders delivered by Nuro's autonomous vehicles, giving both partners real-world operating data and a live service instead of a press release.
Second-order effects
- Rivals move fast: within weeks, AutoX — backed by $43M raised since 2016 — launches its own autonomous grocery pilot in north San Jose, showing the Kroger-Nuro launch is forcing other AV startups to stake out grocery delivery claims.
Third-order effects
- The pattern compounds over time: Nuro extends from groceries into pharmacy delivery with CVS in Houston, Walmart answers with Cruise in the same city of Scottsdale, and by 2024 Nuro wins California DMV approval for its third-gen R3 vehicle — pointing toward autonomous last-mile delivery becoming a standard retail channel rather than a novelty.
The trend: US grocery retail is shifting last-mile delivery from human drivers to purpose-built autonomous fleets, with Arizona's permissive testing environment making it the proving ground where retailers and AV startups race to operational scale.