Charging Stack Podcast: Autolane and AV Commerce at The Curb

In this Charging Stack podcast episode, we talk with Ben Seidl, founder and CEO of Autolane, a company building curbside infrastructure so autonomous vehicles can actually handle pickups, drop-offs, and deliveries in the real world.

Autolane’s system combines smart curb devices, real-time orchestration, and remote operations to guide AVs into the right stall, signal store staff, and coordinate the full handoff. Instead of AVs circling parking lots or blocking traffic, Autolane turns curbs into organised zones for AV commerce – from grocery pickup to parcel delivery. The team is already live in cities like Austin and Berkeley, working with retailers and property owners who want their sites to be AV-ready.

Ben explains why the curb is messier than most maps suggest, what it takes to blend hardware, software, and operations, and how AV commerce could become the backbone for how robots interact with physical spaces.

Prefer reading instead of listening? Check out our full Autolane profile for a breakdown of the business model, use cases, and strategy.

Everything about Autolane in one place

Read our deep dive on Autolane

This episode is for you if:

• You work on autonomous vehicles, delivery robotics, or AV platforms
• You manage retail, grocery, QSR, or mixed-use properties with busy pickup lanes
• You are exploring how to prepare your sites and cities for AV operations
• You want to understand the operational reality of AV deployments, not just the hype

In this episode, you’ll learn:

⚡ Why the curb is one of the hardest problems in autonomy
⚡ How Autolane combines hardware at the curb, cloud orchestration, and remote ops
⚡ What “AV commerce” means and why it could become a core infrastructure layer
⚡ Lessons from early deployments in Austin and Berkeley
⚡ How retailers, property owners, and AV companies can work together instead of shipping siloed solutions

Topics covered include

• The origin story: why Autolane started at the curb, not inside the vehicle
• What actually makes curbs complex: overlapping uses, human drivers, delivery vans, ride-hailing, and AVs in the same space
• How Autolane’s curb devices guide AVs into the correct stall and coordinate timing with store staff
• The concept of AV commerce: turning vehicles into autonomous assistants that can run errands, handle pickups, and complete deliveries
• Real-world lessons from deployments in Austin and Berkeley, and what those sites taught them about behaviour at the curb
• How Autolane fits into the existing AV stack: working with AV developers, retailers, and property teams rather than replacing them
• The role of remote operations in handling edge cases, exceptions, and messy real-world behaviour
• What “good” looks like in curbside autonomy: dwell time, stall utilisation, failed trips, and customer experience
• How cities and property owners are thinking about AV-ready infrastructure and curb standardisation
• Why solving the curb is a necessary step if AVs are ever going to handle everyday errands at scale

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