Time is precious. But also expensive.

We waste a lot of time running errands. Americans alone make a total of 220 billion vehicle trips a year. Of those, 43% are in the name of shopping and errands (to put this in perspective, commuting makes up 24% of these trips). That’s the equivalent of over 60 thousand lifetimes every year. Not all of these trips are considered chores — but many are.

A number of companies are trying to fix this; the on-demand economy exists to save people time. However, these services are expensive and most families can’t pay a premium for every errand they need run.

But what if the convenience of on-demand services was available to everyone — regardless of income or geography? If we made it nearly free to move goods around, how would this change the way our families live, and how our cities work? How else might we spend the ~140 hours per year we each spend running errands?

Everything, on-demand, for free.

We’ve thought a lot about what is required for everyone to stop spending time running errands. In our minds, if everyone can get whatever they need as fast as (or faster than) going to the store themselves, errands will become a thing of the past.

We envision a future where everything comes to you, on-demand, for free.

We believe robotics must play a critical role in making this vision a reality. It’s only through robotics that we can bring the convenience of on-demand to everyone at a fraction of its current cost.

At Nuro, we’ve set out to break that cost curve through autonomous delivery. We’ve built an entirely new class of self-driving vehicle designed purely for local goods transportation. Importantly, we believe that autonomous delivery — and thus the resulting benefits — can be scaled sooner, more efficiently, and more safely than self-driving passenger transportation (more on this in a future post).

We are passionate about using robotics to drive widespread impact. With the help of robotics, we can significantly improve people’s day-to-day lives and transform local commerce. We can do better. Less time on errands, more time on life.

Update: September 12, 2018

An earlier version of this post relied on data from the 2001 Department of Transportation’s National Household Travel Survey (NHTS). We have updated the numbers to reflect the categories and approach taken in the 2017 NHTS.