Cruise co-founder and CTO Kyle Vogt Photo by Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch

Cruise and DoorDash have announced a partnership to pilot food and grocery delivery by autonomous vehicles on the latter’s platform, an activity scheduled to kick off early this year starting from the San Francisco market. Select DoorDash customers will receive deliveries from their favorite restaurants via a Cruise self-driving vehicle as part of the program.

It’ll also include exploration of autonomous grocery delivery for select retailers who have already partnered with DoorDash. Both companies say they expect to evaluate and develop safety, operational and other learnings with this pilot program.

GM CEO Mary Barra stands beside a Cruise self-driving vehicle image : General Motors

“Delivery is a significant opportunity for Cruise as we prepare to commercialize our autonomous vehicle technology and transform transportation,” Cruise CEO Dan Ammann said. “Partnering with DoorDash will provide us with critical learnings as we further our mission to deliver technology that makes people’s lives better and more convenient.”

“We are excited to partner with Cruise to develop our expertise in the autonomous vehicle delivery space,” DoorDash CEO Tony Xu also added. “We see autonomous vehicles playing a major role in the future of delivery as consumer behaviors continue to shift online, and we are confident Cruise’s leading technology will help us scale to meet growing consumer demand.”

Cruise self-driving vehicles image : General Motors

This move marks the first main announcement by GM Cruise under the leadership of Dan Ammann who just took up the CEO role at the self-driving unit after a 4 year stint as General Motors’ president. Ammann has been replaced by long-standing GM executive Mark Reuss as announced by the company recently.

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