In pouring rain, self-driving delivery vans show off autonomous skills

A little rain didn’t dampen ThorDrive, a self-driving car platform based in Seoul, from launching its self-driving delivery service.

Starting Thursday, driverless vans will drop off purchases from a hardware store in Silicon Valley — no human driver steering, accelerating, or braking required.

In a demo ride Thursday in the pouring rain, a small Ford van with ThorDrive branding and four Velodyne LiDAR sensors that use light to measure distance between objects, sensors, and cameras drove some passengers around downtown Palo Alto in the heart of Silicon Valley.