Ford has teamed up with Domino's Pizza to test automated delivery of pizzas, the Detroit News reports.

Customers who participate in the test will get a text message telling them that their pizza is ready. From there, they'll come out to the curb and punch the last four digits of their phone number into a touchscreen mounted by the rear passenger door. "The window rolls down and the customer grabs their order from a warming oven just inside the window," according to the Detroit News.

But don't get too excited. This isn't a fully self-driving car, although it will have a full complement of self-driving sensors, including a lidar on the roof. There will be a driver hidden behind tinted windows in the driver's seat.

Each company gets something out of this deal beyond some free publicity. Ford will be able to gather some data that will help with its goal of developing a fully self-driving vehicle by 2021 (Ford's new CEO has acknowledged it might take a little longer).

For its part, Domino's will gain valuable knowledge about how users react to automated deliveries. According to the Detroit News, "Domino’s will monitor everything from delivery times and customer satisfaction, to where customers touch the vehicle, how easy it is for them to remove the pizzas from the insulated compartment, how quickly they’re able to punch in the code, and if they’re able to keep their hands off the car’s valuable lidar systems spinning atop the vehicle."

There's little doubt that fully automated vehicles will eventually put most pizza delivery drivers out of their jobs. Ford's leadership recognizes this.

"We believe self-driving technology can play a significant role in helping grow the market for restaurant delivery," writes Sherif Marakby, Ford's executive in charge of self-driving technology. He argues that this is "one way that we’ll build demand and scale for our autonomous vehicle business, in addition to people movement such as ride hailing."

At the same time, the test illustrates the challenge Ford will face as the world moves to automated vehicles. After all, in a world where vehicles can drive themselves, it would be absurd to deliver a two-pound pizza in a two-ton car.

Startups like Starship and Marble are already developing robots small and light enough to travel along sidewalks. These robots are lighter, cheaper to operate, and are much less likely to kill someone by running them over. And instead of selling robots outright to restaurants, these companies plan to offer their network of delivery robots as a service to a variety of restaurants.

But Ford isn't in the business of managing networks of small robots. It's used to selling cars to end customers, through dealerships, for tens of thousands of dollars. It would take massive changes to Ford's business model and corporate culture to succeed in the delivery drone business.

So this Domino's partnership is a sign that Ford is at least thinking rigorously about the new markets that will be created by autonomous technologies. But we'll know Ford is truly serious about this specific market if it starts testing much smaller vehicles that are custom-built for deliveries.