Autonomous delivery drone startup Zipline is partnering with Walmart to expand its service to the Dallas-Fort Worth area, allowing select customers to receive orders within 30 minutes.
According to CNBC, Zipline’s expanded service — which began on April 8 — covers the city of Mesquite, Texas, located roughly 15 miles east of Dallas. Walmart will be using the startup’s P2 Zips drones, which can carry up to eight pounds inside of a 10-mile radius, and are capable of landing packages directly on doorsteps. When it makes deliveries, the drone hovers 300 feet in the air, and then sends a mini aircraft on a long tether down with a container, which then sets the package down on the ground.
This comes after weeks of testing the service to a limited group of Mesquite residents, and will mark Zipline’s first foray into the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The drone delivery company has also been partnered with Walmart since 2021 to provide service to Pea Ridge, Arkansas, where it averages around three minutes per order, according to a release from Zipline. Zipline operates in Rwanda, Ghana, Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya and Japan as well, providing deliveries of medicines, blood samples, vaccines and personal protective equipment. In total, the company estimates that it’s made nearly 1.5 million deliveries since it first launched in 2016.
