Air drones - loud, need to be pretty big and noisy to lift larger payloads eg. groceries. In order to cover use cases of food/grocery/package delivery across a city and surrounding suburbs there would be a constant stream of high powered drones whirring through major areas and around streets/footpaths. I don't think this would be acceptable to the public at scale.
Self-driving footpath size delivery vehicles - people won't tolerate anything going faster than 10km/hr on sidewalks and that + crossing roads makes it too slow. In addition, at any reasonable volume and covering longer distances eg. 5km trips across a city these would end up blocking footpaths eg. if grocery delivery sized drones were working in any sort of numbers.
Self-driving delivery cars - could work, but to replace all current package/grocery/food deliveries would involve a huge fleet of cars, or carrying multiple deliveries per car which makes them laggy - not good for takeaway food or packages where a person needs to go to a sidewalk to meet the delivery vehicle.
The idea is that delivery drones in tubes can travel at high speeds - faster than cars (50+km/h with few/no stops), can be centrally controlled to cooperate well on limited bandwidth routes, and will end up being able to be routed like internet traffic. being able to arrive "just in time" will make them ideal for sidewalk pickup by the end customer.
Although highly capital intensive, I think that a well-planned network like this would allow efficiency and competition the likes of which have never been seen before in delivery of groceries, packages and takeaways. Imagine the ability for ANYONE in the city surrounds to compete on grocery prices, not just the large supermarkets on high value real estate. "Last mile" delivery costs are more than half of total courier costs - imagine if these were reduced to near zero.
This means on average overall each person gets 1 delivery per day. Assuming delivery cost of $2 per delivery, this means in a city of 1 million people there is $2 million daily revenue for operators of this, or $700 million per year. At a cost of capital of 5%, this would allow up to $14 billion dollars to construct this network in a city of 1 million people. At an average $4 delivery cost there would be up to $28 billion available.
What percentage of the city would have easy access to tunnel endpoints? It's a pretty difficult last-mile problem.
At least in the short term, a good bet would be funneling stock to retail stores. In lots of neighborhoods, big trucks parked on narrow streets to offload cargo is a big problem.
To do this you would need buy in from all the legacy carriers first. It doesn't work without having them all as your partners, so you get the economy of scale you need. That will be very difficult. Next, you need to consider your own operating costs. How are these vehicles going to be powered? Routed? You will still need to sort and distribute the packages. What if one breaks down in route? How are you going to lift them back up onto the surface? Are you planning to retrofit buildings with tubes going down into your network? Or distribute in/out terminals throughout the city? Both which would require an insane amount of upfront politicking and planning. There will be issues of easements, zoning, and liability to work out. Then, even if you get all the players to agree to your plan, which is unlikely, you still need to deliver the package at a (significantly) lower cost structure than they currently are able to do with government subsidized roads.
Why underground? Could it work in above ground pipes? How big would be the packages and robotic vehicles?
Packages, grocery, and food bring different requirements in terms of delivery speed and size, which could lead to different solutions--some easier to address than others. What is the pain point and most desperate customers for each?
I agree, tunnels below ground have the disadvantages of:
- expensive to bore out
- cannot be changed
- expensive to maintain
Above ground pipes would allow for easier maintenance and a much cheaper roll-out. Crazy but could be worth looking into existing infrastructure like power cable routes etc..
Self-driving footpath size delivery vehicles - people won't tolerate anything going faster than 10km/hr on sidewalks and that + crossing roads makes it too slow. In addition, at any reasonable volume and covering longer distances eg. 5km trips across a city these would end up blocking footpaths eg. if grocery delivery sized drones were working in any sort of numbers.
Self-driving delivery cars - could work, but to replace all current package/grocery/food deliveries would involve a huge fleet of cars, or carrying multiple deliveries per car which makes them laggy - not good for takeaway food or packages where a person needs to go to a sidewalk to meet the delivery vehicle.
The idea is that delivery drones in tubes can travel at high speeds - faster than cars (50+km/h with few/no stops), can be centrally controlled to cooperate well on limited bandwidth routes, and will end up being able to be routed like internet traffic. being able to arrive "just in time" will make them ideal for sidewalk pickup by the end customer.
Although highly capital intensive, I think that a well-planned network like this would allow efficiency and competition the likes of which have never been seen before in delivery of groceries, packages and takeaways. Imagine the ability for ANYONE in the city surrounds to compete on grocery prices, not just the large supermarkets on high value real estate. "Last mile" delivery costs are more than half of total courier costs - imagine if these were reduced to near zero.