Car companies developing business cases for driverless cars are said to be switching their focus from passengers to freight in the light changes to travel patterns thanks to Coronavirus.

The Detroit News reports that, with demand for car-sharing and ride-sharing diminishing sharply thanks to social-distancing , companies are “shifting their focus to using driverless vehicles to deliver goods before they ferry people.”

“We are going to see a lot of these companies shift away from robo-taxis in the near term to goods delivery,” the report quotes Sam Abuelsamid, principal analyst for Washington-based Guidehouse Insights. “There’s more demand for it, and also it’s an easier problem to solve. In the post-pandemic era, there’s going to be some reluctance to use shared mobility.”

(picture shows the Kar-go autonomous delivery vehicle)