Forget robotaxis—the self-driving-vehicle industry is pivoting.

“We’re seeing a real boom moment for industrial autonomy,” Oxbotica CEO Gavin Jackson told The Logic in an interview this summer. “Robotaxis—which is one of the first thoughts that people have when they think about autonomous driving … we just don’t think that that’s going to save the planet.” 

Oxbotica, an AV company dual-headquartered in Toronto and Oxford, U.K., is planning to grow from about 260 workers today to about 1,000 in the next three years. The company works with Ocado on grocery delivery in the U.K., and Jackson said Ocado’s partnership with Sobeys is a perfect opportunity to expand in Canada. Doing more deliveries and speeding up warehouses is the type of project that perks up investors’ ears, as all eyes focus on the supply-chain snags that have wiped store shelves bare.

Matt Rendall, CEO of Ontario-based Clearpath Robotics, which makes autonomous forklifts and pallets through its division Otto Motors, said executives from some of the biggest companies in the world have started calling. And, he said, they are calling with urgency. 

“We’re seeing automation strategies go from a seven-year or 10-year plan to a two-year to three-year plan,” Rendall told The Logic. “Automation spending is not slowing in the face of turbulent market conditions. I would say, actually, it’s accelerating.” 

The robotaxi is dead, long live self-driving forklifts: The COVID-19-induced supply-chain crisis has been a tough moment for most executives. But it’s a validating moment for executives like Rendall, whose company’s warehouse and factory vehicles were, until recently, a very unsexy application of self-driving-vehicle technology compared to taxi projects from Travis Kalanick, head of Uber at the time, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

“We lived through that period where, all of a sudden … billions of dollars were going to a more general autonomy for passenger cars. It was a shiny ball that all of a sudden everybody was focusing on; it kind of sucked the air out of the room,” he said.

Robotaxis aren’t gone, of course. But, Rendall said, “we’re seeing companies start to pivot what they’ve been building toward more capital-efficient and ready-to-monetize applications of autonomy.” 

Why it matters: Supply chains across many industries are in flux, with shipping delays and shortages making it hard to plan factory and delivery schedules. Plus, workers have a healthy number of job openings to choose from, so furloughing factory workers while a plant sits idle or sending truck drivers to wait endlessly at a port isn’t going to allow manufacturers and retailers to keep their supply chains staffed. That means even when a supply-chain delay clears up, it’s not straight back to full capacity.

Sending autonomous trucks onto highways and autonomous forklifts into factories could help companies quickly adjust their production and delivery schedules, the Canadian AV companies said.

What’s next: More companies are riding the industrial AV boom, focusing on logistics and business-to-business types of autonomous vehicles. 

Oxbotica is still going to pursue people-moving AVs in the form of shared vehicles like passenger shuttles, but will also be focusing on vehicles that do jobs like moving mining materials, agricultural materials or consumer goods. For instance, Jackson said, one of the most mundane jobs in the solar-panel industry is scraping off bird poop that blocks the sun—a prime opportunity for a robot to drive around and take over a dirty, but important, job. 

The Canadian auto-parts maker Magna International said on Wednesday it would build thousands of autonomous-delivery robots for Silicon Valley robotics startup Cartken, which operates the small self-driving vehicles in “malls, hotels, universities, retail, back-of-house, and warehouses.” 

WP sign off: Read Shift—The Logic’s authoritative weekly newsletter on automotive technology industry news—for more; and if you know someone who should be reading it, they can sign up here.