Walmart to test deliveries with self-driving cars

Walmart on Tuesday announced that it is teaming up with a new autonomous car company to test deliveries in Scottsdale, Ariz.

The pilot program with Cruise, which is majority owned by General Motors, will begin early next year, Tom Ward, Walmart’s senior vice president for customer product, said in a blog post.

“Customers can place an order from their local store and have it delivered, contact-free, via one of Cruise’s all-electric self-driving cars,” he wrote. “Technology that has the potential to not only save customers time and money but also is helpful to the planet is technology we want to learn more about.”

Walmart has previously experimented with self-driving car delivery, an option that could be particularly attractive for customers during the coronavirus pandemic.

Despite support on both sides of the aisle for regulation, Congress has been unable to pass meaningful legislation on autonomous vehicles.

There have been a number of high-profile accidents involving self-driving cars in recent years that have brought increased scrutiny on the technology.

Several projects in the space from major tech companies have been stalled because of those issues and the pandemic.