THE BIG STORY: Meet The Locker System, And The Autolaner Who Designed It

Ella Murphy designed Autolane's Smart Locker system, the same units that have been demoing in the trunks of our Model Ys from the Bay Area to Nashville. Here is how it happened, in her own words.

The lockers were my very first project at Autolane. Ben came to me early on with a simple ask: he wanted lockers that could live in the trunk of the car.

From there, I started researching how autonomous delivery was actually being solved elsewhere, what other companies were doing for batching multiple orders, what package sizes and item types we'd need to account for, whether things could spill, whether they needed to stay hot or cold, and what locker shape would actually be usable by literally anyone. One of my biggest worries early on was the Tesla's trunk shape. It's deep, and all that width and height sits pretty far back. I'm short, so I kept coming back to the same question: if I can barely reach in, how is anyone going to reach their food, including someone in a wheelchair? Designing for that stuck with me through every version.

The lockers we've been demoing and testing right now are actually multiple copies of that very first prototype, with a few small changes between the first and second manufacturing runs. We had the original lockers made back in February, but almost immediately they were in constant demand for demos, and since I was still in college at the time, I never actually got hands-on time with them to keep iterating new versions. So we made a handful of small adjustments and had three more built. Since then, those lockers have shown up at demos across the Bay Area, Vegas, Austin, and Nashville. It's pretty wild seeing my first-ever project turn into something real, and I can't wait to keep building on it to fit however people end up needing it configured for delivery.

This is what it takes to make batching actually work. Not just cramming more into a trunk, but giving every business the tools to maximize their reach while minimizing their fleet. Powered by Autolane, businesses stretch fewer vehicles further, turning every trip into more revenue and every route into more customers reached.

AV ROUND UP

Uber Sold Its Stake In Serve Robotics. Days Later It Said It Will Spend $10 Billion On Robotaxis Instead. Uber closed out a partnership with Serve Robotics this week that started in 2022 and once put up to 2,000 sidewalk delivery robots on Uber Eats, citing a difference in views on how the fleet should run. Days later, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told investors Uber will commit $10 billion over the coming years to deploy 120,000 driverless vehicles across a growing list of partners including Lucid and Nuro. The message is not that Uber is stepping back from autonomy, it's that Uber is done betting on the modality that underperformed.

Tesla's First Cybercab Rolled Out With A Starlink Dish Built Into The Roof. The satellite antenna keeps the car online outside normal cellular range, a small feature pointed at a much bigger idea, autonomy that eventually reaches past the dense city cores everyone else is planning around. Tesla still is not pulling supervisors out of these cars. The unsupervised fleet has logged well over 380,000 miles without a notable incident, but real scale looks like 2027.

Zoox Just Started Charging Real Fares In Las Vegas. Amazon's Zoox began charging riders for trips in its steering wheel free robotaxi this week. This marks the first time a purpose built, steering wheel free vehicle has taken paying customers in the United States. Zoox also told regulators the category needs federal rules, an unusual ask from a company that just cleared its own approval.

Amazon Says Same-Day Grocery Delivery Is Coming To 2,300 Cities. That used to be an ambitious number.  Now it describes a rollout already in progress, and it sets a new baseline for how fast a grocery order is supposed to show up. Now REITs and grocers must watch that speed race collide with curb traffic they were not planning for.

THE LAST 50 FT

Episode 18 features Shane Feldberg, the first person to ever ask for allocation in Autolane. He built Feld Ventures off a network from ClearBank, the fintech that built the 20 minute term sheet, and has backed more than 50 companies since on one thesis, contrarian bets win at early stage. Ben, Cam and Shane get into why personal injury lawyers lobbying against autonomous vehicles might be one of the worst things happening in this country, and why 40,000 road deaths a year with a fix already sitting on the shelf keeps them up at night. Ben and Cam also report back from Austin, where they took ten unsupervised Tesla Robotaxi rides in the same Model Ys Autolane runs. Ben and Cam’s verdict: the technology is already here. 🎧

Listen on Spotify | Listen on YouTube | Listen on Apple Podcasts

THE AUTOCOMM BRIEF TAKE

This week showed two different speeds at once. Ella built our first locker before she'd even graduated, and it is still out there doing the job demo after demo. That’s one prototype quietly proving itself trip by trip. While Uber, Tesla, and Amazon are making industry sized bets on the same underlying question, who owns the arena where goods change hands. Both speeds end up in the same place, the curb, and the handoff that happens there.

The retailers and REITs paying attention right now are the ones deciding what side of that handoff they want to be on before it gets decided for them.

The lane is changing. Let's make sure it leads somewhere worth going. 🏁

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