Serve Robotics Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
August 13, 2024

There are 4 speakers on the call.

Operator

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to Servo Robotics Second Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your host, Head of Communications and Investor Relations, Adeke Sewell. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Serve Robotics' 2nd quarter 2024 earnings call. On the call today, we have Serve's CEO and Co Founder, Ali Kashani and our CFO, Brian Reed. During today's call, we may present both GAAP and non GAAP financial measures. If needed, a reconciliation of GAAP to non GAAP measures can be found in our earnings release filed earlier today.

Speaker 1

Certain statements in this presentation and on this call are forward looking statements. You should not place undue reliance on forward looking statements. Actual risks may differ materially from these forward looking statements, and we do not undertake any obligation to update any forward looking statements we make today, except as required by law. For more information about factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from forward looking statements, please refer to the press release we issued today as well as the risks and uncertainties described in our most recent Form 10 ks and in other filings made with the SEC. We published our quarterly earnings press release, prepared remarks and supplemental slides to our Investor Relations website earlier today, and we ask you to review those documents if you haven't already.

Speaker 1

With that, let me hand it over to Ali.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Adeke, and thank you all for joining us in our earnings call. You may have already read our earnings release from earlier today. In this call, we will cover 4 topics. First, I would like to briefly introduce the company to those of you who are new to our story. 2nd, I'll share our near term plans to scale our fleet to 2,000 robots.

Speaker 2

3rd, Brian will discuss our Q2 results and the financial impact of our upcoming fleet growth. And finally, I would like to spend a little bit of time outlining our long term vision. At the end, we will spend the remaining time answering your questions. Let's start by sharing a quick history of SERVR Robotics. My co founders and I first started this effort as the advanced projects division of Postmates in 2017 before spinning out of Uber into an independent company in 2021.

Speaker 2

CERB was founded with a vision to revolutionize last mile transportation using autonomous robots to help answer this question, why deliver 2 pan burritos in 2 ton cars? Our team comes with a depth of experience in food delivery, automation and robotics. This positions us well to serve the growing last mile delivery market, including food delivery, where approximately half of our trips are less than 2.5 miles and are well suited for sidewalk robots. We provide a robotic delivery experience that we expect will continue to delight customers, improve reliability for merchants, reduce traffic congestion and eliminate vehicle emissions and even improve safety for pedestrians and cyclists. At scale, we expect our robots to complete deliveries at lower cost than couriers, making last mile more affordable and accessible, which in turn could boost local economies.

Speaker 2

We estimate that by reducing car trips, delivery robots can lower greenhouse gas emissions by over 700 megatons annually, which represents 2% of all global emissions approximately. If you live in Los Angeles, you've probably seen our friendly robots delivering on sidewalks already, or maybe you've seen them on TV, like on John Mulaney's Netflix special, Everybody's in LA or the latest Beverly Hills Cop movie. Our current fleet has been in operation since 2022 and we've delivered to tens of thousands of households throughout Los Angeles, serving over 300 restaurants. And we've serving over 300 restaurants. And we've been consistently increasing our delivery volume by double digits month over month for the past 30 months.

Speaker 2

Our business generates revenue from 3 main sources. 1st is delivery as a service. This is the revenue we make for delivery packages. We operate our suite of robots. We don't sell them to anyone.

Speaker 2

Our second revenue stream is out of home advertising. This is what we get paid for placing ads on our robots. These two revenue streams scale as a function of our fleet size, and we are fortunate to have global enterprise partners and have more demand than available supply. Our 3rd revenue stream is software, which is independent of our fleet size. This quarter software revenue is represented by our income from non recurring services contracts with Magna International.

Speaker 2

Our software revenue is a nod to our broader vision and part of our master plan that goes beyond last mile food delivery. Our plan begins with commercializing our robotics platform for food delivery, but we will then expand beyond food into other last mile categories as we bring down the cost of delivery. And finally, we will use our core technology to power any new robots that need to coexist with humans and navigate our complex environments. I'll speak about our broader vision at the end of this presentation. The final topic to touch on before discussing Q2 is competitive differentiation.

Speaker 2

We believe serve is differentiated by a few key strengths, and this includes our first of a kind level 4 autonomous robots deployed in a Tier 1 city like Los Angeles, our years of experience collecting data and insights from commercially operating and autonomous fleets, our robust data driven approach to engineering and go to market, which was only made possible because we were born inside the industry and had access to unique proprietary data. Also, our history of forming valuable strategic relationships with partners such as Uber, Magnolia, NVIDIA, Delivery Hero and 711. And finally, our superior experience for restaurants and customers compared to what they use today. With the company intro out of the way, let's dive into the highlights of Q2. As you may know, in April, SERV completed a flexible public offering and uplisting onto the NASDAQ Capital Market after raising $40,000,000 in new financing, and we began trading under the ticker symbol SERV.

Speaker 2

This was an important milestone in our journey, providing us with an important source of capital for growth. We've also continued to extend our track record of operational growth and had a strong quarter in Q2 across our primary metrics, daily active robots and daily supply hours. Daily active robots measures the average number of robots out in the field performing deliveries, while daily supply hours measures the average number of hours per day that our robots are ready to perform deliveries. These metrics are important as they provide a high level gauge of our operating efficiency and indicate progress in advance of the larger fleet deployments. During Q2, we had 48 daily active robots.

Speaker 2

That represents a 23% increase quarter over quarter and 85% increase compared to Q2 last year. These robots produced 3.85 daily supply hours, a 28% increase quarter over quarter and a 106% increase compared to Q2 2023. Together, this led to our Q2 delivery and branding revenues increasing by 80% over the prior quarter and by 178% compared to the same quarter last year. We accomplished this while holding flat our corresponding cost of revenues quarter over quarter and observed over 50% gross margin improvement compared to the same period last year. This positive impact to gross margin was driven by improvements throughout our autonomy, software and operations stacks.

Speaker 2

For example, we've steadily increased the average speed of robots. We've also continued improving robots' autonomous navigation capabilities in more challenging environments, resulting in reduced rate of human intervention. And we've made improvements to our route planning, lower cost of connectivity and improved daily deployment operations. As we continue to improve our operations, we paved the path to scale up our fleet to 2,000 robots. As you may know, the 2,000 robot expansion is under an agreement we have with Uber Eats, which allows us to rapidly scale by having access to existing delivery demand in each city we go to.

Speaker 2

The ability to scale through partners like Uber is one of the key strengths of our business model. We've designed our robots to be extremely simple to interact with and require minimal training. So we are able to onboard new merchants through Uber with a simple email message. I would like to share what we expect the fleet expansion process to look like over the coming months. The scale up is proceeding in 4 phases design, manufacturing, deployment and scaled operations.

Speaker 2

So we'll go into fair detail on this, but the headline message here is that once we execute on this plan, we expect to have 2,000 robots generate $60,000,000 to $80,000,000 in revenue run rate annually. Let's begin with the design phase. The foundation of our growth starts with effective robot design, Ensuring that we have high performance and reliable hardware software enables us to continuously improve operational performance and unit economics. Since 2017, we've designed successive iterations of our robots from the ground up based on unique operational insights as well as proprietary data we had on last mile delivery. I'm really excited to share that we completed the design phase of our 3rd generation hardware that will be used to scale our fleet to 2,000 robots.

Speaker 2

The engineering validation and test units or EVP have entered the validation and testing phase as of last month. And now we are in the certification process. We are very proud of the improvements we've made to our robots with the introduction of the 3rd generation fleet. We'll have more to share about the Gen 3 robots, but for now, I'll highlight a few areas of improvement. First, we've made significant upgrades to our sensor suite and introduced a 5 times increase in onboard compute.

Speaker 2

This would power our newest AI models that drive our continuous autonomy improvements. 2nd, we have a new drivetrain and battery pack design with 67% more battery capacity. These upgrades enable the new robots to move twice as fast, travel twice as far on a single charge, breaks 40% more quickly and spend 6 more hours in the field every single day. And last but not least, all of the above improvements and more, they accomplished by cutting our hardware costs roughly in half. So to sum up, upgraded sensors, 5 times more compute power for more AI, more battery, more range, faster robots, more operating hours and all of that at half the cost per robot.

Speaker 2

This brings us to the 2nd phase, manufacturing. We are now preparing the 3rd generation robots for scaled manufacturing. As you may have seen in our April announcement, we have contracted Magna International, one of the largest contract vehicle manufacturers to be our contract manufacturer. We have also assembled our full supply chain and began the initial steps of manufacturing our next generation robots, a multi step process that will continue throughout the rest of the calendar year. We expect the first robot to roll off the production line by the end of Q4 2024.

Speaker 2

This leads me to the 3rd phase, deployment. Our expansion plan involves geographic expansion within both our core operating footprint in Los Angeles as well as expansion into new cities. As you may have seen, in June, we expanded our delivery area into Koreatown in LA and began onboarding local merchants throughout our partnership with Uber Eats. We intend to continue this geographical expansion by rolling out at least 250 additional robots in Los Angeles by the end of Q1 2025 and entering 1 new major metro market by the end of Q2. Our deployment goal remains 2,000 robots by the end of 2025.

Speaker 2

And as previously disclosed, some new markets under consideration include San Diego, Dallas and Vancouver, Canada. Once we have initial deployments completed, the 4th and final phase is scaled operation. This is the process of improving operational performance and efficiency in a new geography over time. We've spent over 6 years designing our robots and the past 2 years focusing on developing tools and processes to improve our operational capacity. Over this time, we've learned that there are significant local economies of scale in robotics delivery and that much of our efficiency is driven by advanced algorithms for task planning and better allocation of our most expensive resource labor.

Speaker 2

Our progress on operational efficiency has led to a track record of a steady increase in delivery volumes by making consistent improvements to our deployment plan, placement of robots, autonomy software and operations, which have also translated into consistent decreases in our dollar cost of revenue per delivery. Ultimately, we found that at full utilization, each robot can be expected to pay for itself in less than 1 year. Naturally, this robot plan will have important financial impact, since much of our manufacturing and production costs will be front loaded and our 2025 revenues will require investment beginning in 2024. Once we complete the 4 phases we just discussed, we expect the new fleet of robots to generate $60,000,000 to $80,000,000 in annual revenue run rate. With that, let me turn it over to Brian to further discuss the rollout and our financials.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Alex, and good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to outline the financial impact of our near term deployment plans beginning with design. As Alex mentioned, the design of our 3rd generation robot is complete. We continue to explore ways to reduce hardware costs, while improving AI and software capabilities. As a result, our team has reduced the cost of the 3rd generation robot by approximately 50% and we have direct line of sight to further cost reductions intended to be incorporated throughout the 2,000 unit production run.

Speaker 3

We are now focused on executing the full scale manufacturing of these robots. As such, during the Q2, we commenced investment in non recurring engineering and tooling to prepare for production. Our supply chain team has been diligently securing materials and components from our global supplier network targets. Initial orders were placed with all vendors and we have started receiving materials for our 3rd generation robots. Thanks to our strategic partnerships and supplier agreements such as Ouster, we are well positioned to maintain steady supply, minimize potential disruptions and control costs.

Speaker 3

As we enter the deployment phase, our strategy is focused on generating immediate revenue through both delivery and advertising streams. Our AI driven robots are equipped to operate in new cities from day 1, thanks to their advanced sensors and navigation capabilities. These minimize the need for pre mapping, allowing us to quickly capitalize on the growing demand for last mile delivery solutions in urban environments. We will take a deliberate phased approach to deployment, rolling out robots in batches starting in Q1 2025. As we move into the scaled operation phase, our goal is to maximize the utilization of each robot, thus maximizing profitability and driving competitive margins.

Speaker 3

Robots are expected to achieve full cost recovery within 12 months after reaching full utilization. Executing this strategy effectively on our fleet of 2,000 robots is anticipated to achieve annual revenues of $60,000,000 to $80,000,000 and positive gross margin. It is important to note that full utilization in a new city may take anywhere from 6 months to 1 year to achieve. With minimal regulatory barriers for sidewalk robots in most U. S.

Speaker 3

Cities and strong support from local governments who view robotic delivery as a way to reduce congestion, accidents and carbon emissions, we are confident that this plan will allow us to scale efficiently and sustainably. Now turning to our Q2 financial results. Revenue for the Q2 was $468,000 which included $296,000 of software service revenue from our agreement with Magna. As we expected, this service contract was substantially completed during the Q2. And as a result, we do not anticipate material revenue from software services in Q3 2024.

Speaker 3

We saw strong growth in our delivery and branding revenues during the Q2, which generated $172,000 an increase of 80% quarter over quarter and 178% over the same period prior year. As Ali described, several improvements throughout our autonomy and software stack enabled our cost of revenues to remain relatively flat when compared to last quarter. As a result, delivery and branding gross margins improved 64% quarter over quarter and improved 85% compared to the same period prior year. Operating expenses for the Q2 were $8,700,000 and include $3,500,000 of non cash stock based compensation expense. Net operating loss for the Q2 was $9,000,000 remaining flat compared to the prior quarter.

Speaker 3

Due to the upfront capital requirements for our fleet, we will continue to explore effective financing solutions for our robots. In June, we received signed commitments with existing equipment financing partners for 11,600,000 dollars As of today, no amount has been drawn under these facilities. As of June 30, the company had $28,800,000 of cash and cash equivalents. Our 2nd quarter free cash flow calculated at cash flow from operations minus capital expenditures was $6,500,000 and included $1,100,000 related to initial manufacturing costs. In July, the company completed a $15,000,000 private placement transaction with a single institutional investor.

Speaker 3

This was an opportunistic fund raise for which we will use the proceeds not only to extend the operational runway, but reduce equipment financing costs and make targeted investments to our technology stack. With our strong balance sheet, we are optimistic about our future prospects and excited to drive market innovation within last mile delivery. I will now turn it back to Ali.

Speaker 2

Now that we've discussed the financials and near term deployment plans, let's take a step back and look at the big picture. I'd like to share with you my view of how transportation will be evolving over the coming years and how that relates to our work here at SURF. Right now, you can ship packages from China to the U. S. For $2 but delivering from Chinatown to your home costs $10 This is because long distance shipping has benefited from significant automation, but last mile transportation has not seen similar advances.

Speaker 2

A cargo ship with a crew of 20 moves more goods than the entire British Navy of 100 1,000 people did a few 100 years back. But an average mailman today does the work of 2 people from 100 years ago. That's a 5,000 times productivity gain in shipping versus 2 times gain in last mile. Fixing this gap is a massive market opportunity and I see artificial intelligence as its unlock. That's because while we scaled our muscles going from horses to steam engines to gas engines and electric motors, we just haven't been able to scale our brains until now.

Speaker 2

A few people on a giant ship can move millions of packages at once, but ships don't help with last mile delivery. There, it's still one person, one box all the way to your front door. This massive historical gap in progress paired with the new advances in AI and robotics is why I have focused our efforts on last mile transportation as a 1st market. It seems clear to me that there is more value to capture in last mile than any other labor transportation. Even within last mile, food delivery is a particularly great beachhead.

Speaker 2

We eat 3 times a day. There's been rapid and steady growth in market size, thanks to hungry customers. Yes, most delivery platforms are yet to turn profitable, because we need our meals within 30 minutes and can't wait for them to show up in a big truck the next day. Meanwhile, everyone complains about costs. Restaurants say they're overcharged, customers say delivery is too expensive and drivers aren't paid enough.

Speaker 2

And some regulators have stepped into the fray, but their efforts seem likely to exasperate rather than improve cost pressures. All of this is due to the inherent cost of last month. And by addressing it, we help unlock massive potential estimated at $450,000,000,000 by the end of the decade. This brings us back to our solution, a personal sized robot that can navigate human environments like sidewalks. Serve delivery robots that are currently deployed in LA for 100 of restaurants have over 1,000 times less kinetic energy than cars.

Speaker 2

They can safely stop at any time for remote human assistance. They plug and play into cities and need no new infrastructure. And they address half of last mile deliveries because median delivery distance is only a couple of miles. Even compared to other automated solutions such as autonomous vehicles or drones, we believe our robots are inherently safer. In fact, we complement AVs and drones because we don't need dedicated parking or loading area like they do and we can pick up orders for them from places they cannot reach.

Speaker 2

Also, our robots are not heavily regulated like AVs and drones are. As a matter of fact, currently in the U. S. By default, our robots are allowed to operate anywhere. To sum up, I believe that we can bring robots at scale to our public spaces as a truly new form of transportation for the 21st century, one that our society deserves, because not only do we lower delivery cost, we also reduce pollution, congestion and traffic accidents.

Speaker 2

But last mile is only the start for us. We have a 3 step master plan, which I quickly mentioned at the beginning of the call and hope to speak about more in the future. Step 1 of our master plan is to commercialize food delivery, starting with our 2,000 robots for Uber Eats, because food delivery is one of the most expensive last mile applications today. As we scale our fleet and lower delivery costs, step 2 is to expand to all other last mile sectors beyond food and sidewalks. This could be delivering groceries or medications or other parcels to customers on sidewalks or moving things within other environments such as malls, airports, hospitals or factories.

Speaker 2

And step 3 is to use our core robotic tech to power all robots globally that want to coexist with humans and navigate our complex environment, whether they have 4 wheels or 2 legs. I think many people share this vision that over coming years, we are going to see a rapid rise in the use of robots with some technology visionaries even forecasting proliferation of 1,000,000,000 robots within the next 25 years. And for that to materialize, robots will need to enter our spaces. We can be a natural partner for robot makers new and old, including those working on humanoids form factors, because they too need to walk among humans. And that's something we are really good at.

Speaker 2

We've been building AI models to help robots navigate complex human environments for the last 7 years. And that's our 3 step master plan, solve food delivery, solve last model beyond food delivery and then use our technology to power other robots moving among humans. Before we bring this to a conclusion and open up for questions, I want to emphasize our clients' focus on the first phase of our vision, which is to scale up our food delivery fleet. We have spent the last 7 years preparing for this moment. And with the incredible progress we are seeing in AI and robotics and the increasing demand for last mile automation, we are confident in our strategy to lead the autonomous delivery industry and bring more efficiency into last mile.

Speaker 2

Before answering questions, I want to truly thank each and every team member at SERVE and every partner to SERVE for their unwavering commitment and resilience. You've all been instrumental in driving our success and meeting our strategic objectives. I look forward to continuing this journey together and achieving greater milestones in the quarters and years ahead. Thank you. And with that, let's turn it over to questions.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, I will now pass the conference over to Adeke for questions. Please go ahead.

Speaker 2

I'd like

Speaker 1

to begin by saying thank you to all investors and analysts who submitted great questions to us over email. We really appreciate the engagement. So to start off, let's start with a composite question that covers many of the common questions we received. Many wanted to understand how we receive orders, how far our robots go, how they manage handoffs to customers, whether they can go inside buildings, etcetera. So Ali, why don't you start by walking us through how the robots work exactly?

Speaker 2

Thank you, Adike. Let me start at the beginning. Every morning, robots head out of work head out to work usually on their own from our central facility. They stay out all day and then they return home at night once they're done. They can go all day on a single charge and they can go upwards of 20 miles every single day.

Speaker 2

And that's our current robots. The 3rd gen robots that I mentioned earlier are doubling that range. An average delivery today takes robots about a mile. The order process from a customer's point of view, it's just like any other order. It starts by placing an order on Uber Eats and at the end of the process being notified that the order has been handed into a robot.

Speaker 2

The robot then heads over to the restaurant and once it's there, it notifies the restaurant to have the staff come out and load the robots when the food is prepared. The robot then heads over to the customer who uses the Uber Eats app to track the progress just like any other order. And once the robot arrives at the destination, the customer is notified and they are able to go outside to retrieve their item. Now note that the robot does not enter the building, it waits on the site and customers can use a button in the Uber Eats app to unlock and retrieve their item. Currently, the robot only has a single cargo space, but we've done batch deliveries in the past with 100% success rate and the interior of the robot is fully customizable.

Speaker 2

Also, I should mention that customers are generally happy to come outside to meet the robot because getting the delivery in a robot means that they don't need to tip and it happens that tipping is one of the biggest cost components that customers perceive. And then finally, once the robot is done with that delivery, it heads to the nearest restaurant for the next order.

Speaker 1

Okay, great. Thank you. So our next question comes from Rommel Dionisio from Aegis Capital. And he is asking, can you please describe sequential growth in delivery volume in LA during the current quarter?

Speaker 3

Sure. I can take that one, Eduke. So thanks, Rommel, for the question. As you know, we don't provide quarter over quarter specific delivery data, but we're very happy that this quarter we extended the 30 month track record of double digit month over month increases. And we're seeing that in our delivery volumes each month.

Speaker 3

More importantly, we have the key metrics that we do disclose in our filings earlier today. Those include the daily active robots, and those increased 23% quarter over quarter and about 106% compared to Q2 last year. And we also had a 28% increase in our daily supply hours from all of those robots. As Ali mentioned, just to tie those together then, right, we were able to have an 80% increase in the delivery and branding revenues within the quarter compared to last quarter. And most importantly, I'd say, we did all of that by holding the cost of revenues flat when we looked at Q1 versus Q2.

Speaker 3

And we're really going to be focusing and continuing to execute to make the economics work as we grow the fleet. So thanks, Rommel.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Brian. And if I can add some color to that last statement, the reason we have been able to grow our revenue while keeping the costs flat is that we've been making a ton of improvements to our software, to our autonomy stack and also to the way we operate the robots. This includes increasing the average speed of the robots, making the autonomy work better in difficult environments, reducing the rate of human intervention, improving route planning and much more that hopefully we'll speak to more in the future.

Speaker 1

Okay, thanks. Our next question comes from Chris Lajaj, the Founder of LD Micro. He asked, how do you guys measure success on the engineering side? Will the robots have more functionality and more uses in the years to come?

Speaker 2

Thank you, Chris. This is a great question. Ultimately, everything really comes down to 4 performance areas, which is safety, customer satisfaction, unit economics and market size. So our software and hardware at every iteration, we need to 1st and foremost make sure that we are operating safely. And once you're safe, you want to make sure that you are timely and reliable so that the customers are happy.

Speaker 2

Once you have those table stakes sorted out, the next step is to make sure that we are reducing cost for last mile delivery compared to what it is today. And then lastly, as we expand the capabilities of the robots, we are increasing the size of our market opportunity. So every successive generation of our robots, both hardware and software, have been improving these four areas. We already have a really strong track record when it comes to safety and reliability and customer satisfaction. And our existing robots can serve last mile air vent delivery, the short distance deliveries that has a total addressable market of 100 of 1,000,000,000 of dollars.

Speaker 2

So our focus out of those 4 areas today is mainly on 1, which is unit economics, which is we want to make deliveries profitable as we scale our fleet. And our 3rd generation robot that we just announced has improved a number of key areas that touches on all of those performance areas, but specifically on unit economics, Like having more battery, which means more range and more hours of operation every day, it improves economics because we can do more deliveries per robot per day, therefore amortize the fixed cost over more deliveries. Faster robots also improves the economics because you do more deliveries a day, but it also improves customer satisfaction. Of course, reducing the cost of the robots is a really important contributor to our goal for reducing delivery costs. Cheers, Aditya.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Ali. Our next question is from Brian Kinstler at Alliance Global Partners. He says, can you speak to the competitive landscape? And can you explain how served robot compares to others?

Speaker 2

Yes. This is a great question. And, I guess it's important to first highlight that robots like ours can have a variety of applications from warehouses to campuses and to urban environments like where we are focused on. There are a number of players that are on campuses today. The way we look at it is campuses are more akin to a closed environment with fixed repetitive routes that don't necessarily need as sophisticated of an autonomy and AI system, whereas when you're on the city sidewalk, you need really, really mature and sophisticated AI and autonomy so that you can navigate that environment in a safe and reliable way.

Speaker 2

And that's what we've been creating. Campuses are a really good place for robots because of that added simplicity, but it's also a smaller market with less spending on delivery compared to cities and populated centers. So for those reasons, we have been focusing on cities rather than campuses. We are building that deep tech and AI that's needed to serve a much bigger market with better economics. And as we do that, we can expand to other environments, including campuses as well.

Speaker 2

But ultimately, this is a really huge market and there is room for many great companies to be built on robot delivery, whether it's in warehouse or a campus or a sidewalk.

Speaker 1

Okay. Thanks, Ali. Our next question is also a composite question from E mail. What is the price of the robot? What can you tell us about BOM cost?

Speaker 2

Thank you. Our cost per robot continues to come down significantly. It is based on a number of factors. We don't disclose the specific number, but there are 3 main drivers that brings the cost down. 1st of all, when we are building robots as a one off low volume fleet in the past, obviously, they cost more.

Speaker 2

But now that we are scaling up the ramp up, the volume helps us bring the cost down. Secondly, a lot of the components in the robot, they're also getting cheaper and better over time, like our batteries or compute, our sensors are getting cheaper over the years we've been operating. But most importantly is the design of the robot. We've done significant improvements throughout the iterations we've done recently to bring the cost per robot down, which as I said, it's about in the 3rd generation is about half of the cost of previous generations. For our 2,000 robots that we are launching with Uber Eats, we've mentioned this publicly before that a robot will cost less than the cheapest new car you can buy in the United States.

Speaker 2

And as we said in the call earlier, at full utilization, each robot would pay for itself in less than

Speaker 1

Okay. Thanks, Ali. The next question is from Larry. Why limit your potential to just serving food? What about delivering packages for USPS, FedEx, Amazon and others?

Speaker 2

Larry, you are a visionary. I could not agree more. There is a lot of potential for our tech beyond food delivery. And I outlined this in the 3 step master plan earlier, which is that food delivery is only our first step. I mentioned the second step to be expanding beyond into adjacent areas like groceries, medications and parcels, which I believe is what Larry was referring to.

Speaker 2

There are also other use cases for robot delivery that don't exist today like reverse logistics. Imagine what it would look like if you could return things in robots in a cheap and convenient way. Or using them to enable and support other automated delivery vehicles like AVs and drones that I mentioned during the presentation. And then finally, step 3 would be to use our technology to really power other robots and bring other robots that want to exist with humans and navigate our environments to market.

Speaker 1

Thanks Ali. Our next question comes from email. Are the robots frequently stolen or vandalized? Can they defend themselves?

Speaker 2

So this is a question that I get more often than I've actually had to deal with cases of vandalism. First off, our robots have a secured cargo, as we mentioned earlier, and only the intended customer can get their package. Secondly, the robots operate in fairly crowded environments and during busy hours. So they are equipped with cameras and sensors. They have remote communication.

Speaker 2

They have loudspeakers. So they have a lot of deterrents designed into them and into the way we operate. But having said that, perhaps the most important thing to mention is the proof that we have in the numbers, which I shared earlier. Over the years, with tens of thousands of deliveries we've done, we have had a much higher delivery success rate than even couriers have today. And it's very rare for a package to not be delivered successfully, leave alone to be stolen or vandalized.

Speaker 2

And the last thing I would mention is if you visit if you go to our operation areas in LA, what probably is going to surprise you most is how quickly people have become indifferent to the robots. They're just walking by as if nothing is happening, even though the first time out there, it can be quite an incredible experience to see one of these robots moving around. I would imagine that the mailboxes were first introduced, people had a similar concern that their stuff is going to be sitting there in a box in public and people can vandalize or steal them. But today, we don't notice mailboxes anymore. It definitely appears to me that our robots are in the same trajectory of becoming an unnoticeable mailbox except for with wheels.

Speaker 2

And just like mailboxes, robots are also going to make lives better.

Speaker 1

Okay, great. I believe we've covered all the immediate questions for today. And so with that, I'd like to thank everyone for participating in SIRV's first virtual conference call and hand it back to the operator to close.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. You may now

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