“Waymo said that its autonomous vehicles will be used to help shuttle car parts between several AutoNation locations and other repair shops in the Phoenix, Arizona area,” reports the International Business Times:
While the expanded partnership may not seem like a big deal at first blush, it’s important for investors to know that the move is yet another step for Waymo toward the self-driving business-to-business delivery market. While Waymo has received a lot of attention for the company’s robotaxis (which currently run in a limited capacity in the Phoenix area), the company has always been clear that the same technology that drives its people-moving vans can be used for delivery of goods as well.
Why focus on self-driving vans for package deliveries and autonomous freight trucks? Because the market for B2B deliveries could eventually be as high as $1 trillion, according to Bloomberg. Autonomous vehicle deliveries are being seen as the answer to the growing truck driver shortage in America. Sixty-five percent of the consumable goods in the U.S. are moved via trucks, and the American Trucking Association says that the shortage of long-haul drivers has reached 60,000… With e-commerce still growing quickly, companies of all sizes are trying to find better ways to deliver their merchandise to third-party businesses and customers. And that’s what makes Waymo’s expanded AutoNation partnership so important.
If the company can prove that its autonomous driving vehicles can quickly and reliably perform deliveries over and over again for AutoNation, then other retailers may soon look to the company for their delivery needs.
of this story at Slashdot.
Source:: Slashdot