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Amazon Buying Whole Foods

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At least in my limited travels, Tesla seems to like having SuperChargers near Whole Foods already.

Perhaps future full self-driving "local delivery fleet" Teslas will deliver groceries from Whole Foods during the day and then recharge there overnight after the store is closed. (Although they could recharge anywhere, it may be slightly more efficient to charge near their next "destination").

BTW, can you imagine the challenges of designing safe FSD for parking lots? Pedestrians, shopping carts, strollers, scooters, bikes, wheel chairs, disabled spots, compact spots, cars misaligned in spaces, drivers backing out, drivers waiting a space you want, finding a spot, parking preferences, speed bumps, curbs, coned off areas....
 
Pedestrians, shopping carts, strollers, scooters, bikes, wheel chairs, disabled spots, compact spots, cars misaligned in spaces, drivers backing out, drivers waiting a space you want, finding a spot, parking preferences, speed bumps, curbs, coned off areas....

The only tricky one is "driver's waiting for a space you want", all the rest are just obstacles to be avoided while driving 4 mph. Elon has said "fast [i.e. highway] is easy, slow is easy, medium speed is the tricky part." Priority management is a SOCIAL problem, not even currently in the purview of autonomous driving.

Thank you kindly.

p.s. Not sure making the parking issue at Whole Foods worse is a good idea:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UFc1pr2yUU
 

Supermarkets are really very obvious places for charging.
Theoretically, with a reservation system, they could even be used as an alternative to home charging.

An EnergyStar doc gave an average of 50kWh/year per square foot, which is 5.7Wh/sqft.
Average size 45k sq ft, so average power demand 256kW. Depending on the swings in power, there's potential for offering cheaper rate off-peak charging.
 
Theoretically, with a reservation system, they could even be used as an alternative to home charging.
May be a subject for another tread, but city dwellers (who park in the street or park in an older building)
really need to find supercharging city EV stations, to go there may be once a week similarly to to way
you go to a gas station. A reservation mechanism would then be needed to avoid creating waiting lines.

There are also a lot of parking lots not used at night (Super markets, schools, churches...) that could be used for EV charging.
 
Whole foods charging is terrific for little cars with tiny batteries. They need to top off somewhere, just to make it home. When they get low on juice, it will be an excuse to go get their groceries.

For bigger battery cars (like Tesla) free charging while shopping is just kind of a perk. You get a reserved parking space (EV only) and get a little free juice while you shop.

I imaging that a bevy of electric scooters, 3 wheel grocery getters etc will also find a market, as they also can get some juice while shopping.

Urban street parkers will also be drawn to stores with a place to plug in.

Good marketing for grocery stores. Little cost to the store, but great value for their clientele.
 
No, I guess my point was too obscure:
Both Jeff and Elon control Space companies;
Amazon Pay has been trying to emulate the PayPal success;
Amazon has moved aggressively to sell solar and wind power products;
AWS is moving rapidly to 100% renewable energy.
Both philosophically are oriented to want to change the fundamental way people behave commercially.
That is what I mean by "...areas closely related to each other"
 
I can't imagine that Whole Foods employees are happy about this. The people I see working at my local WFM seem cheerful and well treated.

Amazon on the other hand works its employees to exhaustion and then discards them like rubbish.

Yeah, I've heard the same thing - WF tends to treat their people well from talking to employees. Amazon on the other hand has a horrible reputation of what it's like on the inside.
 
Whole foods charging is terrific for little cars with tiny batteries. They need to top off somewhere, just to make it home. When they get low on juice, it will be an excuse to go get their groceries.

For bigger battery cars (like Tesla) free charging while shopping is just kind of a perk. You get a reserved parking space (EV only) and get a little free juice while you shop.

That logic doesn't close--it's a relic of the 'fill er up' mentality. Unless the small battery car needs a charge to get home, it basically loads [vehicle to vehicle efficiency aside] the same amount of range as a big battery car.

Opportunity charging is opportunity charging, regardless of battery size.

The other piece of the pie that you might be missing is the fact that Whole Foods often has DCFC options. That's shopping time well spent for someone without home charging, regardless of battery size.
 
Well there's a rumor that Alexa may be available in Teslas in the near future (RUMOR).

I can see how when SpaceX starts running routes to Mars, Amazon may become the major supplier/purveyor of goods for future travelers....
 
Don't forget that Bezos has a rocket too. Certainly he's not going to win the race to mars, but it will certainly make for interesting times...

Wonder if there's more money to be made ferrying people or freight? (Obviously the people will have to be there to some extent for the freight, unless the freight is/are robots sent over to terraform first...)