Ford and Domino’s planning to deliver your Pizza WITHOUT a driver

Ford and Domino’s Pizza are starting research to gauge customer reaction to their Pizzas being delivered to home by an autonomous delivery vehicle.

The world is going to change significantly in the coming few years as autonomous vehicles start to hit the roads.

Not just autonomous cars, but delivery trucks and vans too, wiping out millions of jobs in the UK as computers do the job the driver once did.

From cab drivers to lorry drivers, bus drivers to delivery drivers, all are going to be sacrificed on the altar of progress, for better or for worse.

Whatever you point of view it all seems a bit of a no-brainer, so Ford is getting ahead of the game with a research programme with Domino’s Pizza to find out just how their home delivery customers react to having no one handing over the pizza at the door (or expecting a tip).

Ford has turned a Hybrid Fusion in to a pizza delivery vehicle complete with Domino’s Heatwave Compartment to see what the reaction is.

You’ll be able to track the delivery vehicle en-route to your home, and you’ll get a text when it’s 50 feet away. But it seems the big concern is whether people will be prepared to take the walk on to their drive (or by the kerb) to access the food compartment and retrieve the pizza.

 Russell Weiner, Domino’s President, said:

We’re interested to learn what people think about this type of delivery.

The majority of our questions are about the last 50 feet of the delivery experience. For instance, how will customers react to coming outside to get their food? We need to make sure the interface is clear and simple. We need to understand if a customer’s experience is different if the car is parked in the driveway versus next to the curb. All of our testing research is focused on our goal to someday make deliveries with self-driving vehicles as seamless and customer-friendly as possible.

It’s going to happen, so we might as well get used to it. But we rather think that if you’re at the top of a block of flats or the weather’s miserable you might just give the takeaway a miss.

Still, without a delivery driver in the equation the price should drop. Or is that a bit of an optimistic thought?