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Elon Musk vows to build Tesla pickup truck 'right after' Model Y
Tesla has been hyping up the prospect of an electric pickup truck for a long time (you're looking at an artist's rendering above), but when can you expect to see it? You might have a clearer idea. As part of a call for feedback, Elon Musk has promised that the pickup will be made "right after" the Model Y crossover arrives between 2019 and 2020. We'd take that commitment with a grain of salt (remember how Tesla expected widescale Model 3 deliveries to start in 2017?), but it at least gives you an idea of what the EV maker is shooting for.
7-Eleven tests app-based deliveries in Dallas
Convenience stores earned their name by stocking food and everyday items in a shop you could easily reach. But what if your local store isn't all that close, or it doesn't carry what you're looking for? If everything goes according to plan, 7-Eleven might have you covered. It's testing a mobile app, 7-ElevenNow, that lets you order food, drinks and other products for delivery or in-store pickup. You won't have to brave the rain just to score a pack of your favorite soft drinks -- instead, a courier can bring them to you. The trial is active in 10 Dallas-area stores.
Uber and Lyft will test dedicated pick-up spots in San Francisco
One of San Francisco residents' biggest gripes with ride-hailing services is that their vehicles tend to double park and clog bike lanes. With traffic as bad as SF's, city officials had to do something about it. That's why Mayor Ed Lee has struck a deal with Uber and Lyft: San Francisco will launch a pilot program converting parking spaces into painted curbs ride-hailing drivers can use as designated pick-up and dropoff spots. Lee has been negotiating with the companies for months and has agreed to do the pilot in exchange for precious traffic data the city can use to combat congestion.
Amazon Instant Pickup service gives you orders in 2 minutes
Amazon's Prime Now usually does the job if you need something in a hurry, but what if you can't even afford to wait a couple of hours? If you happen to live in the right city, you might have that quick fix today. Amazon has launched an Instant Pickup service that lets Prime subscribers grab food and other essentials (and, logically, Amazon devices) at a staffed pickup location within 2 minutes of ordering them from the company's mobile app. You probably won't have an urgent need for an Echo, but this could be helpful if you lost your headphones or want a snack while you're in the area.
Walmart takes on Amazon's grocery pickups with automated kiosks
Walmart isn't letting up in its quest to one-up Amazon whenever possible, especially when it comes to in-person pickups. The retailer is testing a kiosk in Oklahoma City that lets you pick up your online groceries at any time of the day or week. Instead of parking and waiting for a staffer to bring out your food, you enter a pickup code and wait for the kiosk to automatically fetch the order from bins inside. You need to spend at least $30 and order during store hours, but there are no special fees or other limitations. If you can't fetch your groceries until 3AM on Sunday, you're fine.
Uber finally lets you adjust your pickup location
Lest we forget among all the corporate stupidity, Uber is actually popular for a reason: It's convenient, and taxi service often sucks. The ridesharing firm has just fixed one of the main bugaboos with its app, the fact that you can't modify your location once you order a ride. Riders in the UK, US and Canada can now change their pickup address if they notice it's wrong, avoiding a "frustrating situation where riders aren't riding and drivers aren't earning," Uber says.
Amazon's next retail outlets are drive-up grocery stores
Seattle residents might be able to order groceries from AmazonFresh online and pick them up from a brick-and-mortar outlet in the near future. The city has given the company permission to install "AmazonFresh Pickup" signs in Seattle's Ballard and SoDo neighborhoods. GeekWire captured some photos of the locations under construction last month. Now the fillings it has unearthed indicate that the drive-up grocery outlets are almost ready to open for business. According to the documents, the shops will have signs that say "HELLO, BALLARD" and "HELLO, SODO." Their exterior walls will also be painted with slogans like "Shop online. Pick up here." and "Relax while we load your groceries."
Amazon reportedly plans to open convenience stores
Amazon's plan to be a one-stop food shop may extend well beyond those rumored drive-up grocery stores. Wall Street Journal sources claim that Amazon hopes to open convenience stores where you'd buy meat, veggies and "other perishable items" that you take home like you would from any brick-and-mortar store. Tech would only come into play when you want something delivered. Mobile apps, and possibly in-store touchscreens, would let you order longer-lived food for same-day delivery. You wouldn't have to worry if you couldn't carry everything home.
Domino's will track customers on their way to pick up pies
Domino's already lets customers monitor the status of their pizzas for delivery, but on Monday it will reverse that service, allowing pizza-makers to track the location of customers coming in for a pie pick-up. The program rolls out across Australia starting on Monday, according to CNBC. Anyone in the country who orders Domino's from a smartphone will be prompted to enable location-tracking on themselves, plus choose whether they're coming by bike, car or on foot. Domino's will start cooking the appropriate pizza once the customer is in range, so it comes out as fresh as possible, CEO Don Meij said.
Currys PC World trials collections from Carphone Warehouse stores
Following their £3.8 billion merger, Dixons and Carphone Warehouse have set about expanding their collective retail presence by incorporating phone shops inside bigger Currys and PC World stores. It's a tactic that has worked well, so well in fact that the two companies are now set to make better use of Carphone's independent outlets. In a bid to compete with rivals like Argos, Currys and PC World have begun trialling collection points at the phone seller's stores. Right now, the trial is limited to smaller appliances and is available in 22 Carphone Warehouse locations across London, Hertfordshire and Canterbury.
Nordstrom tests curbside pickups for online orders
Store pickups give you the luxury of shopping online without waiting days for deliveries, but there's still one big hassle involved: you have to, y'know, enter the store. That won't be a problem if Nordstrom's latest experiment pans out. Several of the retail chain's locations (including its Seattle flagship) are testing an option that lets you pick up an internet order while staying in your car. All you do is call or text when you're near the shop, and a staffer will wait for you outside. There's no word on whether or not Nordstrom will expand the streetside option, but here's hoping that it does. This would not only save you time picking up a new wardrobe when you're in a rush, but spare you from hunting for that elusive downtown parking spot. [Image credit: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images]
Crowd-based shipping service lets you use Waffle House for pickups
If you're running a crowd-driven shipping startup that delivers packages through helpful travelers, where would you have people pick up their goods? A restaurant, apparently. Roadie has forged a deal that will have Waffle House locations serve as some of its pickup points -- yes, you can get pecan waffles at the same time as you're collecting your new food mixer. The theory goes that you're meeting at a safe, friendly place instead of taking chances with your rendezvous. It's a strange move, but it makes sense. Roadie doesn't have (or need) the store network of a big courier like FedEx or UPS, so it might as well choose a nationwide retail chain that you probably know well.
Amazon's first staffed pickup spot lets students get textbooks quickly
Sure, Amazon has unmanned delivery lockers to save you the trouble of waiting for a courier, but that human touch could come in handy sometimes. What if you need help with a return, for instance? That's where Amazon's first-ever staffed pickup location, Amazon@Purdue, promises to come to the rescue. The location lets university students and faculty both pick up their online orders and drop off returns (including textbook rentals) in a helpful, trustworthy place -- you shouldn't have to worry about someone swiping your new laptop while you're in class. It's potentially faster, too, as some products qualify for free one-day shipping to the Purdue facility.
Argos opens its first click-and-collect store on the Tube
For a long time, Argos embodied the phrase "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." That is until a couple of years ago, when it set out plans to become more digitally minded. Part of this strategy has been to improve the in-store experience by swapping laminated catalogues for tablets, but Argos is also trying to make itself more attractive to online shoppers. And to that end, the company today opened its first collection-only store, conveniently located -- for nearby Londoners, at least -- in Cannon Street Tube station. With long opening hours and same-day collection available if you buy or reserve online before 1PM, it's bound to be the saviour of many a last-minute Christmas shopper. In the grand scheme of things, however, it also shows Argos is aware that simply having a click-and-collect option isn't convenient enough anymore. These days, it's all about location.
Amazon will now deliver to your local Post Office
As Amazon prepares for another bumper Christmas, the internet giant has been doing all it can to ensure its logistics are in order. Just over a week ago, it debuted free same-day delivery for Prime members, striking a blow against high street retailers, but today it's revealed its biggest delivery coup yet. Amazon customers can now choose to have their orders shipped to their local Post Office, after it teamed up with Royal Mail to add 10,500 Post Office locations to its Pickup Location Programme. That means Amazon now has an impressive 16,000 pickup points in the UK.
Square's new app lets you pre-order food and drink before picking it up
Square is one of those apps you may have heard of, but have no idea what it does -- because it mostly sells point-of-sale software and readers to businesses. It has just quietly expanded its consumer presence with Square Order, however, which looks like the customer-based app used in conjunction with Square Pickup for merchants. We says "looks like" because the app has quietly slipped into the iOS and Android (Beta) Play stores without any official announcement. Using it seems simple enough: you locate a restaurant, cafe or shop (Whole Foods, for instance) from a list of Square Pickup merchants. Then, you can place a pre-order, pay for it and receive a notification from the app when it's ready. That'll put it into competition with apps like PayPal's wallet and GrubHub, though so far Order is only available in New York and San Francisco (more cities are promised soon). We've reached out for more info, but if you're in one of those 'burgs, grab it here. Update: We've just learned that Square Order is really a phasing out of Square Wallet. Head on over to this post to learn more about it.
Square introduces 'Pickup' for simple online purchases
Since its inception in 2009, that little white payment dongle has snuck into small businesses everywhere, making plastic a less costly proposition for the little guy. Today, it's taking another step toward small business ubiquity with "Pickup," which, fittingly, is a service that enables customers to purchase goods online for pickup in stores at the time of their choosing. The service gives sellers a free online market place and, as with its other products, the barrier to entry is nearly non-existent; the service is free to setup and the fee per purchase is 2.75 percent until July 1st, at which point it will go up to a standard 8 percent. Jack Dorsey's other baby is also enabling offline purchasing via its Register app for those gasp-inducing moments when the internet goes dead; a welcome addition for anyone who's ever had their dreams of an artisan cupcake crushed by faulty WiFi.
Square's Pickup app streamlines ordering take-out in San Francisco
If you thought ordering a new shirt from Uniqlo and grabbing it from the store 20 minutes later was rad, Square has something similar cooked up for your favorite restaurants. The outfit is demoing a new Android and iOS application called Pickup at a handful of San Francisco eateries, according to Priceonomics. With the app, Square is streamlining the food ordering process to a few taps on your smartphone: you choose an item from the menu, pay for it and then, well, pick it up. Given Square's popularity with small businesses (especially with competition from GoPago, GrubHub and OrderAhead), hopefully it isn't long before the outfit releases Pickup outside of NorCal.
Order your office supplies from Amazon, pick them up at Staples with upcoming lockers
Amazon lockers have been popping up at 7-eleven stores and UK retailers, but now they're arriving at what seems like a conflicted destination: bricks and mortar (and online) arch-competitor, Staples. The service allows shoppers who missed a delivery to head over to a locker and nab their packages using a 72-hour code, with the host retailer keeping a small fee in return. But there aren't too many items at Staples that you can't also find at Amazon, so we hope the office supply giant got a sweetheart deal. [Image credit: Wikimedia Commons]
Chrysler taps Sprint for new Uconnect in-car data, wants always-on internet that's hands-off (video)
Interior technology is increasingly the main battlefield for automotive giants. We shouldn't be surprised, then, that Chrysler is bringing in some bigger guns for its Uconnect service through a team-up with Sprint. The carrier will integrate its cellular data into a Uconnect Access system where the source of pride is precisely how little Chrysler drivers will need to touch it: the two want voice commands that cut down the amount of involvement needed to plot a new course, change the music input or send a text message. Smartphones also get much more of a say in the matter this time around, providing remote control to open and ready the car before owners even set a foot inside. WiFi hotspot support carries on as well. Just be aware that you'll have to go big or go home to get an early taste of the new Uconnect -- it's available only in the 2013 model years of the Ram 1500 and SRT Viper for now, neither of which is especially gentle on the pocketbook. Update: It looks like the 2013 Dodge Dart R/T will also get the Uconnect goodies, which Sprint's press release neglected to mention. [Thanks, Nathan]
