Ground Delivery Precedes Dedicated Infrastructure

Coco is betting that dedicated robot infrastructure will arrive only after street level delivery is already common, not before. The important point is that sidewalk robots can start with existing sidewalks, bike lanes, and road shoulders, then earn their way into city planning once order volume is high enough to justify curb space, charging spots, and robot friendly lanes. Santa Monica's zero emission delivery pilot shows how that transition can begin with local policy before full infrastructure buildout.

• Coco's robot is basically a locked cooler on wheels that stores at merchants, gets loaded by staff, and runs 1 to 2 miles at walking speed on sidewalks and up to 15 mph on bike lanes and shoulders. That means it can plug into streets that already exist, instead of needing drone pads or new hubs first.
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• The closest ground comparable, Starship, shows the same pattern. It has scaled to more than 2,000 robots and 8 million deliveries largely on existing sidewalks and campus paths. As robot density rises, the main bottleneck shifts from autonomy to local rules on where robots can wait, charge, and cross busy streets.
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• Air and ground are likely to split the map rather than one replacing the other. Drone operators like Manna expect suburbs with yards to favor fast aerial delivery, while dense urban cores favor ground robots that can reach apartment buildings and carry heavier, less time sensitive orders like groceries and multi bag runs.
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The next phase is cities treating autonomous delivery the way they treated bike lanes and scooter parking, first as pilots, then as permanent curb and lane allocation. If Coco keeps scaling in dense markets, the winning operators will be the ones that prove enough demand and reliability to justify redesigning a small part of the street around them.