Slashdot Mirror
Walmart Says It's Preordered 15 of Tesla' New Semi Trucks (theverge.com)
Soon after Tesla unveiled its new electric Semi Truck and Roadster 2.0, Walmart says it has preordered 15 of the trucks. The Verge notes that the deal was "likely in the works before Tesla unveiled its new truck to the public." From the report: The pilot is planned for the U.S. and Canada. Five of the preordered vehicles will be for Walmart's U.S. business, and 10 will be for its Canadian routes, the company said. Walmart's fleet has about 6,000 trucks. "We have a long history of testing new technology -- including alternative-fuel trucks -- and we are excited to be among the first to pilot this new heavy-duty electric vehicle," the company said in a statement. "We believe we can learn how this technology performs within our supply chain, as well as how it could help us meet some of our long-term sustainability goals, such as lowering emissions." Musk said the truck would enter production in 2019. JB Hunt Transport Services, a 56-year-old company based in Arkansas, also reserved "multiple" new Tesla trucks as well.
Learn to read better. The economic conditions required for large tractor trailer style trucks to be the best options must be satisfied or there are cheaper options.
Speaking of reading, the Tesla post from yesterday stated that 80% of US truck routes are 250 miles or less. That is well within the range of the Tesla solution, which was probably a justification to build the damn thing. Today, there are over 130 million trucks registered for commercial use in the US (not including personal trucks which are considered SUVs by DOT).
They can be used but it is not the most efficient cost effective option, and in business controllable costs must be minimized or you will not last long.
Mega-corps are becoming a rather dominant force in business, and those mega-corps build mega-stores. The kind of stores that justify larger truck haulers. When you provide an all-electric option with a million-mile warranty, that tends to be one hell of a justification for those "business controllable costs."
Suppliers pay Walmart for shelf space for greater retail distribution, they own items on shelves until purchased by customers then Walmart uses EDI systems to purchase from supplier and pocket revenue difference.
Yeah, they seem to focus on software updates that make for good press releases, but don't give a damn at stuff that would only be noticed by everyday drivers.
There are bugs in the whole media player software stack that enrage me every time I drive the car. I don't even know whose ear to yell into about them anymore, because they simply don't care. (And if you mention on forums, you get drowed out by 50 pet feature requests to the point that actual bugs get lost in the noise).
Thankfully, these are really the only actual issues I have with the car. Everything else about it is wonderful, and its kinda hard to go back to an ICE car after driving one.
That is actually less true today than ever before. Walmart is just one of many companies who adapted to the Amazon effect by becoming real estate moguls and renting out the store shelves.
Basically a lot of stores now do consignment supply - the vendor supplies the goods to the store, and the store only pays the vendor when the good is actually sold, minus a store cut.
You might also see this termed as "Vendor Managed Inventory" - because it's the vendor who is providing the store stock. This is also coupled with contractual store rentals where companies may rent aisles of the store. This is easily seen when going to the electronics department, and looking at video games. You'll notice there are separate aisles of Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony - each of these companies has basically contracted with the store to rent a certain amount of space. The store must provide the rented space, even though it seems silly. You may see racks and racks of empty shelves - or perhaps an entire rack is filled with a single game, 1 copy deep. This is because the rack is rented, and even if there's nothing to fill it, it still belongs to the renter. Employees often shuffle items to fill the racks because empty racks are ugly. Its also why for example there was an empty rack for PS Vita stuff - Sony dictated that rack was for PS Vita, and even though the Vita is dead, the store is obligated to maintain it.
Of course, you see that say, the PC Games section in the same store is non-existent - because that's actually the store's owned rack, so that's whatever games the store deems will sell and justify that rack's presence. Unless a big PC game publisher comes and rents a rack (which does happen, in which case it's filled with that publisher's games) the store's own inventory typically pales in comparison.
You might find the stores are often willing to price match online stores in this case as well - since the vendor is paid whatever the price is minus a store cut, if the store matches the online price, the vendor is paid less.
Note this applies to the big national chain stores. Mom and Pop stores still have to buy their inventory like normal, and rarely do vendors actually request to rent some space