[moffkalast]

Any solution that isn't a stopgap is necessarily electric given climate change, and while EVs do reduce CO2 emissions they increase particle emissions from heavy tyre use by 20% (given their massive weight), which is arguably even worse for residential use. Anything that is in contact with the ground will produce some kind of particle pollution.

[Retric]

The extremely limited flight times and weather conditions you get from electric drones means large scale drone deployments will likely require small internal combustion engines and all the associated pollution from that. Some hybrid approaches where a land vehicle uses fully electric drones for drop off have been prototyped, but they don’t reduce tire ware.

Longer term it’s more debatable but we hand waving delivery drones as completely pollution free when we don’t know what from they would actually take is simply wishful thinking.

[moffkalast]

To be clear I'm talking about zipline's specifically designed delivery VTOLs, not your average consumer quadrotor. I wouldn't call over an hour and a half an "extremely limited flight time" and 50 miles is enough of a delivery range to make it operable from whichever restaurant/warehouse is making the delivery. And that's just today's tech.

[Retric]

Ok, I see your confusion.

Zipline 2 has a 10 mile range and is VTOL though they’re aiming for a long wire for delivery rather than landing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipline_(drone_delivery_compan...

Zipline 1 does have an 50 mile range but it isn’t VTOL they use fixed wing and have a launching system and a net to catch drones. Packages are dropped at 100 feet while the drone is flying at high speed requiring a parachute and a 5 meter wide landing zone which makes it undesirable for large scale adoption.