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by bluescrn 1776 days ago
They've found a niche there where drone deliveries can work and be worthwhile. Getting lightweight but vitally important payloads (medical supplies) quickly to locations hard to access by road.

Amazon is in the business of delivering bulky and heavy packages, often of low value and importance, and poorly-but-cheaply packed into oversized cardboard boxes. I can't imagine a very large percentage of Amazon deliveries would be in any way suited to drone delivery, especially when you've got to limit it to destinations with a suitable landing/drop zone, within a certain range of a depot but away from dense urban areas (too high-risk to operate in)
1 comments
maxerickson 1776 days ago
Yeah, I live in a relatively rural part of the US and can drive hundreds of pounds of stuff at 60 miles an hour to almost anywhere within a few hundred miles.

That doesn't eliminate rapid delivery of small packages as a business model, but it really constrains what is worth shipping using a drone that can carry a couple of pounds.

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Robotbeat 1776 days ago
Right. But a lot of Amazon deliveries are single packages, and probably most of them are within the ~4 pound weight limit of current Zipline drones. 80mph, straight-line one-way delivery without requiring a dedicated human driver is pretty effective for rural delivery (and the drones have a range of 300km per charger, currently). But it really is more like Starlink than fiber. It's better suited to underserved rural areas where it's impractical to do single-package delivery.

And I think the current ~$15-20/delivery price for Zipline is too high to be terribly practical for most items, but in a rush (and given 24/7 availability), it's absolutely worth it. I can think of many personal instances where a $15-20 delivery charge would easily be worth it to trim hours off of delivery time.

I think at this point it's likely safer (i.e. to pedestrians, etc) than delivering the same item via truck. I really do think this has a future, and I'm glad that they've reached a sustainable level of operations in Rwanda and Ghana.

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