A Self-Driving Fix for a Population Problem
Autonomous delivery vehicles could provide one unexpected solution to a deepening dilemma in Asia: declining fertility rates and the effect on the workforce.
Traffic in Tokyo.
Photographer: Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg
This week, SoftBank Group Corp.’s Vision Fund invested nearly $1 billion in California-based autonomous delivery vehicle company Nuro. Nuro’s small (and distinctive) vehicles are already delivering groceries in one Arizona ZIP code. Arizona’s relatively friendly geography seems a sensible place to start. Should Nuro’s robotic vehicles make their way to Asia, they’ll find immensely different landscapes in scope, scale and opportunity.
The differences in Asian cities are obvious: narrow and circuitous streets in places like Hong Kong and Tokyo, growing vehicle fleets (almost) everywhere, and more and more humans packing into already huge cities. China is the world’s largest auto market, and even in wealthy Hong Kong, the number of vehicles per 1,000 people has increased by nearly 50 percent in the past 15 years. Singapore is different: Its vehicle fleet has grown considerably in absolute terms, though it has declined in relative terms since the mid-2000s.