[Someone1234]

> resulting in higher utilization per vehicle

A van can hold thousands of 2-ounce packages, whereas a drone can hold one. If you look at it in terms of a one-package utilization rate, a van has over 100% rate, because it holds multiple packages, in fact it may have over a 1000% utilization rate using that metric.

You're essentially wasting tons of energy and resources getting very small packages delivered faster, but in urban setting there are no efficiencies here, quite the contrary.

[LeifCarrotson]

I just hope my DoorDash order is not sandwich #9,836...

A locomotive would be even more efficient over long distances, carrying 200,000,000 such packages. A containership even more so, carrying more than 20x the capacity of a big freight train, though I don't think they have the draft to fit up the drainage ditch behind my house. Nor do I have rails.

I jest, but the long tail is a real problem with such efficiency calculations.

You're right that it's never going to make sense to have migrating swarms of drones flying above the interstate carrying packages cross-country, but are real efficiencies here at the individual level:

https://www.cell.com/cms/attachment/4b8da4bb-42c2-4b91-baf2-...

Graphic from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patter.2022.100569.

[lttlrck]

This is why I don't feel bad ordering smaller items from Amazon when I could drive across town and get it myself.

But Uber eats and DoorDash are a reality, and I would pay someone to pick something up for me from Home Depot within the next hour. Services like Zipline have the potential to help out there.

[jcims]

>This is why I don't feel bad ordering smaller items from Amazon when I could drive across town and get it myself.

I've long thought this. UPS isn't driving from the hub to my house to deliver a package, 90% of the incremental driving distance is the length of my driveway.

[tnel77]

>>A van can hold thousands of 2-ounce packages, whereas a drone can hold one.

In a perfect world, yes. In reality, no. You would need a perfect storm of a huge wave of orders all to the same restaurant (or cluster of restaurants) to be delivered to the same neighborhood to ensure timely delivery so the food was hot and the customers were happy. In real life, you are almost guaranteed to never hit the ideal conditions.

Edit: After re-reading your comment, I’d agree with you for the non-food deliveries. My comment was obviously focused more on the UberEats use case.

[hypertele-Xii]

Clear example: Hospitals have helicopters, but most patients are still moved using vans. The helicopter is faster (when patient's life is acutely ending), but prohibitively expensive to utilize for every patient.

[janosdebugs]

That example doesn't quite hold up. A helicopter is roughly the same size and weight as an ambulance and needs to transport a whole bunch of equipment. If we could get a Zipline drone to drive on the street, it would be vastly more efficient than its airborne brethren, but our infrastructure isn't set up for that.

[dgacmu]

It's also a lot more dangerous, both for the patient and the flight crew. It takes a pretty critical need to offset that.

[Breza]

I've long thought there's potential in using drones to transport drugs and light equipment to hospitals. Crewed helicopters are expensive and risky, but the stakes are lower when your drone is only carrying a few thousand dollars of a drug that's rare enough it's not worth stocking.

[cancerhacker]

Here's a thought: vehicles that are already scheduled (uber or robot-taxies) are already scheduled from point A to point B. Drone scheduling could piggyback on this such that as large vehicle passes restaurant R at A', a drone from R lands and disgorges your sandwich into a locker mounted on a landing pad on top of the taxi. (hand waves - that's just a mechanical problem, can't be worse than what a fast food place is doing.) As the ground vehicle approaches B, a new drone (or the same drone, if it was just hitching) could finish the delivery to your home H at B'.

Obviously it would take a lot longer than a direct flight, but the energy consumed would be far less.

Or, people should just make a sandwich.

[Hextinium]

A network of "wardriving" drones that use semi-trucks and box trucks as charging hubs while in transit is the next innovation of short distance delivery.

[marcosdumay]

You've got the answer, but just to point the problem with your comment from another point of view...

No, last mile delivery is made package by package. If you place 100 packages in a van and go delivering them, you will make 100 mostly independent trips, just carrying all the packages at once.

That's why those are very often done by motorcycle.

But indeed there is often a highly correlated trip segment. The Amazon's model of running a van into your neighborhood and distributing things there by drones may make sense. It doesn't make sense for Uber Eats business model, but it makes sense for Amazon.

[cosmojg]

That's why I exclusively order my food delivery via container ship!