Self-driving delivery company building manufacturing plant in NLV

The Las Vegas Valley has been a hotbed for autonomous vehicle-related activity and now North Las Vegas is getting in on the action.

Self-driving delivery company Nuro broke ground Tuesday on its 100,000 square feet production facility on 10 acres of land in North Las Vegas. The building being constructed on the northwest corner of Craig Road and Bruce Street, will be an end-of-line manufacturing plant that will see its products tested at nearby Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

“We’re diversifying the economy of Nevada. It’s not all gaming, tourism and hospitality anymore,” said North Las Vegas Mayor John Lee. “North Las Vegas has made that happen for our community. The thing that I like is these new industries come in and all of a sudden the world looks around and says ‘What’s going on over there?’ They start following this innovation and pretty soon we get all kinds of subsidiary companies that follow them and other opportunities to bring in brilliance to our community.”

Nuro is also set to build a 13,000-square foot structure at the speedway, where it will test out its driverless vehicles on 74 acres of land. The testing will allow Nuro to validate all of the autonomous vehicles it produces after they are fitted with sensors and lidar at the manufacturing facility.

Between the manufacturing plant and the test track, Nuro is set to add 250 jobs in Southern Nevada with an average starting wage of $27.50 an hour.

Nuro is expected to partner with area schools, including the College of Southern Nevada, to ensure interested workers have the required education to carry out the new jobs, Lee said.

The Governor’s Office of Economic Development is set to provide Nuro $170,519 in tax abatements over 10 years as part of the company’s move into North Las Vegas.

“They looked around at different states, they looked around at different areas of North Las Vegas in the valley and landed at Craig and Bruce because it just made more sense to them because it was within a development area that was on the rise,” said Jared Luke, North Las Vegas director of economic development. “There is a lot of infrastructure going in and around there that satisfied the workforce that they’re bringing in.”

Nuro is expected to make $1.3 million in capital expenditures over the next two year and generate $5.3 million in tax revenue over the next decade.

Nuro is based in Silicon Valley and has partnered with companies like Domino’s Pizza, FedEx and Kroger for various autonomous delivery programs. Both Nuro facilities are expected to be fully operational sometime next year.

“We’re excited about companies like this coming in and Nuro is a great advancement in the new world of tech that we’re looking at,” Lee said. “So we’re excited to support it.”

Contact Mick Akers at makers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2920. Follow @mickakers on Twitter.