Innovative Multimodal Delivery Pilot Completes 300 Grocery Deliveries

Published on May 16, 2025

Mozee’s electric, autonomous vehicle is large enough to carry passengers and goods.

By Susan Schrock, Office of Communication

Using cutting-edge air and ground robots, the City of Arlington and its partners successfully delivered the last of 300 boxes of groceries to East Arlington residents this Friday as part of the two-year Multimodal Delivery pilot program.

With the help of a $780,182 U.S. Department of Energy grant, the City has conducted this innovative pilot program since October 2023 to test the efficiency and scalability of using autonomous, electric delivery vehicles to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while helping residents who are underserved. Arlington partnered with Tarrant Area Food Bank, The University of Texas at Arlington, the North Central Texas Council of Governments, Dallas-Fort Worth Clean Cities Coalition, Airspace Link, Aerialoop, and Mozee for the study.

“The lessons that we are learning from this will be far reaching,” said Ann Foss, Planning and Program Manager for the City of Arlington’s Transportation Department. “We are carefully looking at the energy usage for the program, the cost-benefit analysis, and the feedback from the participants. Did they actually like getting groceries this way? Most report that they do.”

The Tarrant Area Food Bank provided the grocery boxes, which were distributed to East Arlington food bank clients during the initial demonstration week in September 2024 and the final demonstration week, May 12-16. Researchers used Aerialoop’s ALT6-4 VTOL Delivery aircraft, a 6-foot-long battery powered aircraft that can carry nearly nine pounds, to transport boxes of food from a distribution point to a hub closer to participants’ homes. Then the boxes were placed inside Mozee’s electric, autonomous vehicle, which is large enough to carry passengers and goods, to be delivered curbside to participants homes. Participants received a text message about the delivery and were able to retrieve their groceries from the no-emission Mozee vehicle.

The City and its partners will use data collected from the deliveries to evaluate the impact of these new technologies on air quality, energy efficiency, and public attitudes toward electric and autonomous vehicles.

“We will be analyzing the results, putting together deliverables with our lessons learned, and sharing those with our granting agency, the U.S. Department of Energy, as well as with other communities who may want to try a similar technology," Foss said.

Curious to learn more about this innovative program? Head over to www.arlingtontx.gov/multimodal for all the details.

Aerialoop’s ALT6-4 VTOL Delivery aircraft is a 6-foot-long battery powered aircraft that can carry nearly nine pounds.