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I saw this when it aired in the 80s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ndY8g0cuEI

Walmart could be saving lots of money now if they wanted to, and without any special technology.

Walmart's newer fleet already tends to be trucks and trailers with side skirts and other aerodynamic features, plus tend to not be of the cabover design which pretty much mandates a brick wall of a front end that rams into the air around it. Most prototypes, like what this truck is, tend to be like high fashion designs. Yes, they look ridiculous and extreme and weird, but the aspects, the bits and pieces of the designs tend to show up in the finished product.

A truck like this lets them see with one rig how much is saved by the aspects they want to explore -- a new cab design, even more radical aerodynamics, a new powertrain, new materials for the trailer -- altogether, and do tests to see which areas are worth further exploration in a finished product. Plus, it's flashy and eye-catching, which is useful for the departments that work on these sorts of things. It lets them say, "hey, we make neat things, and get people talking about walmart, keep funding us."

That looks like a normal truck on the road today. Isn't that what they have now?

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