Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is planning to use driverless car technology to deliver products to consumers faster.
It seems that many tech firms are now adopting autonomous vehicle technology. Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) introduced its self driving car, Waymo. Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) recently acquired a license to test it autonomous car in California and General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) is working on designing its own autonomous car.
Amazon may not actually be looking to build the vehicles, but the company has engaged about a hundred employees to come up with methods to potentially use the autonomous technology to boost its own retail as well as logistics operations.
Impact on the company
Having fleets of autonomous tucks in shipping items could play a big part in lowering the operation costs for the company. The online retail giant spends billions of dollars on shipping each quarter. These costs continue to escalate as the company is hoping to do all deliveries to their consumers across the world.
In the past two years, the company has been seeking to take up more shipping duties from firms including FedEx Corporation (NYSE:FDX) and United Parcel Service Inc. (NYSE:UPS) through leasing planes, trucks as well as ships. It has also embarked on testing drones for doing delivering items the consumers from the warehouses as part of Prime Air Initiative.
Amazon acquires autonomous vehicle patent
Amazon acquired a patent for the technology which allows driverless vehicles to monitor traffic as well as the lanes on highways.
A transportation and mobility analyst at Gartner, Mike Ramsey stated that Amazon has become a very significant player in logistics. He said, “The idea of using autonomous vehicles that can work around the clock is really the perfect implementation of the technology.”
A range of self driving equipments could already be implemented as the company seeks to deliver products to customers as soon as possible. Autonomous cars have the ability to enhance the delivery of products to consumers while autonomous forklifts and big rigs would reduce the amount of time the company requires to meet the orders.
The stock of Amazon closed at $907.41 on Monday after a rise $8.88 or 0.99%.
