Driving Further: Nuro’s National Data Collection Tour Returns

We’re working toward a future where safer roads save lives, emissions are reduced, and people reclaim their time from behind the wheel.

To get there, we need an AI driver that can handle the full complexity of the real world—from a busy city crosswalk to a rain-slicked highway at dawn. At Nuro, we believe solving those challenges starts with the right data: diverse, real, and deeply representative.

That belief drives our National Data Collection Tour—a coast-to-coast initiative to accelerate the development of a scalable, generalizable autonomy stack. Now entering its second phase, the tour is back with a sharper focus: collecting richer, more complex data to push our AI driver further.

Why We’re Back on the Road

In late 2024, our first tour collected a large volume of data across various road types and regions. It laid the groundwork for our generalization strategy. But to build a truly adaptable AI driver, we need more than coverage—we need complexity.

Our second tour has just begun and runs through the end of June across 40+ metropolitan areas. This tour will focus on richer driving challenges, not just broad coverage.

Our Approach for the Second Tour

• Depth over breadth: We’re concentrating on dense, complex city environments—residential streets, downtown corridors, and unpredictable intersections—with multiple passes through the same areas to deepen learning in the most challenging conditions.

• Mapping to accelerate deployments: We’re using this data to develop offline and online mapping capabilities to support L2 through L4 deployments in key cities.

• More rain, more realism: Spring scheduling increases exposure to challenging weather, helping our system learn in adverse weather conditions.

We’ve optimized this tour to challenge our autonomy stack where it matters most—layered traffic, mixed-use streets, and edge-case behaviors.

A Tour Built for Scale

This tour is a critical and ongoing part of our generalization strategy to improve the Nuro Driver. As with our recently announced data collection initiative in Japan, we’re building a sustained program that will continue to improve our system across diverse environments and driving cultures.

Every mile we drive moves us closer to our goal: democratizing autonomy to move people, goods, and society forward— making the best of life more accessible to everyone.