Waymo, Alphabet’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) self-driving car company, announced this week that it’s expanding its partnership with AutoNation (NYSE:AN), an automotive retail company, to include auto parts deliveries. 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. The announcement adds to Waymo’s existing partnership with AutoNation, in which some of the self-driving car company’s vehicles are used to provide rides to AutoNation customers…

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.
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