If you live in the Houston area, you can test out the new CVS self-driving car prescription delivery service this summer
Photo: Julie McMurry via Pixabay
Though some events and products in the auto world have been postponed or canceled due to COVID-19, the pandemic is also inspiring some creative projects involving driverless cars. This June, CVS Health will partner with Silicon Valley startup Nuro to test out a self-driving car prescription delivery service.
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Details about the service
CVS Health will try delivering prescriptions with self-driving vehicles in a test that begins next month. The drugstore chain will partner with Silicon Valley robotics company Nuro on delivery to customers near a Houston-area store. https://t.co/sFbjklUE2P
— The Associated Press (@AP) May 28, 2020
The goal is to help keep customers healthy while making sure they have the prescriptions they need. The autonomous vehicles would also deliver other products besides pharmaceuticals.
CVS will launch the service in the Houston area. To access the service, customers must order their prescription via CVS. Once the driverless vehicle arrives, they must confirm their identity to unlock the delivery and retrieve their medicine.
According to a CVS spokesperson, the vehicles will aim to make the deliveries within an hour after the customer calls in the prescription. This enhanced convenience and efficiency will give people an extra incentive to use CVS for essential medicine and other products over rival drug stores.
More about Nuro
Today, we’re excited to announce our partnership with @CVSPharmacy. Nuro will now offer secure delivery of prescriptions, medications, and other essentials to the Houston community. Read more on our upcoming service: https://t.co/HK9YvQOtU3
— Nuro (@nurobots) May 28, 2020
If you’re not familiar with Nuro, CVS isn’t the only entity the startup has partnered with to help advance its self-driving car technology. A while back, it launched AV delivery services with Domino’s and Kroger. Both of these partnerships also targeted the Houston demographic.
However, Nuro’s partnership with CVS is the startup’s first venture into the healthcare world. This decision is a strategic move on Nuro’s part, considering that right now more than 75 percent of U.S. residents live within 3 miles of a CVS pharmacy. According to current CDC stats, nearly 50 percent of Americans rely on prescription medications on a daily basis.
For more exciting news on the self-driving car front, check out this article. Or find out more about Nuro’s partnership with Kroger last year.
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Whitney Russell is a current resident of Dayton, though her spirit can be found beach-bumming in Puerto Rico (the land of her half-Puerto Rican heritage). When not adventuring through the exciting world of car news, she can be found hiking with her husband and their two dogs, motorcycling, visiting her cute nephews and nieces, discovering new memes, reorganizing and/or decorating some corner of the world, researching random things, and escaping into a great movie, poem, or short story. See more articles by Whitney.
