The CEO of Doordash, Tony Xu, says that the path of autonomous deliveries filled with “a lot of pain and suffering”, but the company is approaching the first round of commercial progress

“Candembous, it was mainly filled with a lot of pain and suffering,” Xu said in an interview on stage on Monday to FortuneBrainstorm Tech conference in Park City, Utah.

Doordash has been working on robotics autonomy and technology since around 2017, Xu said in what he described as a “long journey”. Any company that tries to get involved in autonomous technology and do it on a large scale must master a variety of different skills, he said: “Imagine learning a new sport, but this sport has five different subdomains just to say that you are a recruit in this sport.”

You must build the hardware, develop the software and also refine the delivery network, especially in the event that an autonomous delivery vehicle ends up stuck and need human intervention. “It is very rare that one company is just as good for all these skills,” said XU. “I think we have the potential to be one of these companies, but I think we are still very early in the strengthening of competence.”

Doordash has adopted a several -part approach – parties with other companies on things such as deliveries of robots and drones, but also to develop part of its own autonomous technology internally. For example, Doordash works with Coco Robotics to test robots that transport food and grocery store via sidewalks to Los Angeles and Chicago, and he made drone deliveries with an alphabet drone subsidiary, Wing, Australia. Internally, the company has its own arm called “Doordash Labs” where the company works on owner delivery robots.

XU said that these long -term investments that the company began to do eight years ago had started to bear fruit. These investments “begin to go to the first round of commercial progress”.

When asked where customers could discover some of these forms of autonomy in the United States, Xu has specified that there are not yet official autonomous commercial operations.

“We have not yet operating it today. A large part is in testing forms,” ​​said Xu. But he pointed out that drone deliveries occur in Australia and that Doordash began to obtain the necessary permits to start making drone deliveries in “Select Cities” in the United States

So far, there is no specific calendar – or, at least, not an XU is ready to speak publicly.

“Let’s see how fast the team can deliver,” he said.