[jahewson]

That's much more reasonable, landing on a stationary truck is obviously going to be straightforward and safe. It's still probably best to do it away from major roads though.

The fuel was never an issue, sure there's a net increase in fuel consumed but not a net increase in energy as the drone is less efficient than the truck at transporting the same load.

A "last mile" drone is a pretty good idea, not just because it increases range, but because it avoids the need for the for the drone to return to the depot after each delivery. On the other hand, if the deliveries are tightly clustered it might sill be more efficient to just deliver them using the truck, as drones waste a lot of energy working against gravity.

[e12e]

> That's much more reasonable, landing on a stationary truck is obviously going to be straightforward and safe. It's still probably best to do it away from major roads though.

Well, even crossing a highway with a large number of drones, is bound to lead to some of them failing and falling down into traffic? I suppose in some way there's some safety margin, having the drone do a controlled crash as soon as one engine fails -- but there must be scenarios in which the (presumably rather cheap) devices suffer sudden failure (eg: battery pack failure?).