Walmart-Waymo Mashup: Autonomous Ride Meets Curbside Grocery Pickup In Arizona Test

Bit by bit, companies outside the automotive and digital-tech spheres are helping advance the promise of autonomous driving in ways that ultimately may make the difference whether public acceptance makes the driverless-car era a fait accompli, or rank-and-file indifference or resistance delays a transformation of the transportation economy. The latest case in point is a new test by Walmart of the biggest thing in locomotion to hit its aisles since the debut of those little electric carts that physically infirm customers are allowed to drive around its stores. The world's largest bricks-and-mortar retailer is piloting a service with Waymo in Chandler, Ariz., that will allow an exclusive group of customers who place orders through Walmart.com to catch a ride from their home to the store in one of Waymo's self-driving Pacifica vans; known as "early riders," the targeted group is Waymo's 400 daily users. Walmart employees will bring the groceries to the van. "Our personal shoppers get to work meticulously picking customers' orders based on their pickup times," Tom Ward, vice president of e-commerce operations for Walmart, said in a blog post.