California automotive startup Faction is getting ready to debut its autonomous delivery service using Nvidia-powered autonomous three-wheel electric vehicles (EVs).
Using the automotive-grade artificial intelligence (AI) system Nvidia Drive AGX, the autonomous driving system will be used for last-mile enterprise delivery.
According to ABI Research, business-to-business parcels grew to 11 billion in 2021, up from 7 billion in 2019. This number is expected to rise to 75 billion by 2030. This significant growth will put huge strains on last-mile delivery systems that are already struggling with the boom in e-commerce, a lingering labor shortage where drivers have become a much-needed commodity and the uptick in delivery services.
Faction is aiming to help with the delivery portion of this challenge with its D1 flagship vehicle that is built on EV maker Arcimoto’s vehicle platform.
The D1 is designed to be completely driverless — it has no traditional cockpit — and combines autonomous driving with teleoperation to navigate along selected delivery routes.
The three-wheeled vehicle can reach speeds up to 75 miles per hour with more than 100 miles of battery range and can haul up to 500 pounds of cargo.
Using Nvidia’s Drive AGX platform it runs redundant deep neural networks that powers the vehicle’s AI capabilities and is automotive grade to achieve safety standards such as ISO 26262 ASIL-D.
While the initial focus of Faction will be last-mile delivery, Faction is also targeting its vehicles for the micro-mobility market and plans to launch single-rider vehicles next year that can be requested on-demand via an app.
In this service, the vehicles will drive autonomously to the customer, who will then take control and manually drive it to their destination.
