Nuro versus Instacart is the wrong comparison, in my view. Instacart is B2C, while Nuro, if the Kroger pilot is how they plan to expand, is B2B.

With Instacart, you as a grocery customer decide it’s worth a significant premium to have groceries delivered to your door, with full service. With Nuro, the initial customer is the grocery store itself; to you as the grocery customer, it’s stores with Nuro versus stores without Nuro.

With a service like Nuro, the stores probably hire an extra person or two per shift so some of the floor staff can be assigned picking and loading, spreading out the labor costs. As you say, getting the cost down is critical, and if Nuro succeeds, I could imagine autonomous delivery eventually being priced into part of the standard operating costs for a grocery store.