Amazon Invests In Aurora, The Self-Driving Startup
Amazon is one of the biggest organizations in the world, especially in the online retail store segment of the market. However, it has been expanding into newer horizons every day with it’s the latest investment being in a highly acclaimed startup called Aurora which specializes in self-driving cars and trucks.
Aurora has grabbed eyeballs by developing cutting-edge technology in autonomous vehicles recently and Amazon’s potential interest in investment shows that they are not going to let go of any chance to be a part of innovation that can potentially change the way business as well as society works. Amazon believes that these self-driving vehicles will help their cause tremendously whether it is on the roads or the centers and will make the work safer and easier for themselves as well as the client, as lesser human involvement will be required.
Amazon has already made investments worth millions on various firms but their financial involvement with Aurora is not that elaborate yet. The initiative was primarily taken because the shipping cost shot up to $21.7 billion between 2015 and 2017 and these self-driving vehicles could play a significant role in getting that down. Their efforts have already been targeted as they developed drones that could deliver packages to the door. There has been an odd sighting of a self-driven truck pulling a trailer of Amazon recently as well. Another incident reported six robots delivering packages door to door in Washington, accompanied by employees.
The hype around self-driving trucks and cars has taken a hit recently with speculations about the challenges it must face before it can become mainstream. However, the Aurora CEO Mr. Chris Urmson believes that it is just a phase and will take some time to catch up and become the mainstream. Since Aurora is run by people who have experience in working in similar projects like Waymo and Tesla, success seems to be just around the corner.
