Walmart + Google = Drone Delivery In Dallas

Walmart announced this morning that it was partnering with Google sister company Wing to expand drone delivery in Dallas. Delivery is limited to within six miles of the two stores that the companies are adding, but 60,000 additional homes will now have access to drone delivery in the Dallas area: a significant upgrade in coverage for Walmart and Wing.

Walmart has been testing drone delivery for two years now while its biggest competitor, Amazon, seems grounded. Walmart is now offering drone delivery in seven states from 36 stores, the company said today.

“With drones that can fly beyond visual line of sight, we’re able to unlock on-demand delivery for customers living within an approximate 6-mile range of the stores that offer the service,” Walmart SVP Prathibha Rajashekhar said in a statement. “Customers will be able to order items like frozen treats (when those ice cream cravings hit), household essentials, last-minute meal solutions like macaroni and cheese, and even fragile items like eggs.”

Wing massively upgraded its capabilities earlier this year to enable self-loading hands-free pickup as well as complex route management that should allow its drones to fly multi-point routes for optimal delivery, coverage, and recharging.

The company has flown hundreds of thousands of deliveries in Australia and Canada, including the world’s first-ever mall-to-home drone delivery service, and recently unveiled its “aircraft library,” which the company says makes it able to quickly create highly-efficient cargo drones for multiple purposes.

Walmart already has 11 drone hubs operating in the Dallas area, making the big Texas city the nexus of cargo drone delivery innovation in the United States.

Service at the two new hubs will start “in the coming weeks,” Wing says.

“This is a major milestone for Wing, as we continue down our path toward building capabilities to support some of the most significant delivery operations in the world,” Wing CFO Shannon Nash says. “Our technology is designed to complement existing delivery offerings, making overall systems more efficient and able to meet real customer needs.”

Partnering with Walmart is a big growth driver for Wing, and one that it will need. Irish cargo drone delivery start Manna Aero, which has completed hundreds of thousands of drone deliveries as well, looks to be expanding soon to the U.S. and mainland Europe.

If Amazon wants to compete, it has its work cut out for it.

While there are recent job posts for Amazon Prime Air, the companies’ nascent drone delivery service, a linked YouTube video showing Prime Air’s “new delivery drone” is four years old.