[merger]

Quadcopter Drones are just not viable for delivery with current battery technology. Maximum lift is a couple of pounds for 15-20 minutes of flight. Wide use of overhead power lines in cities makes drone delivery unsafe in cities. Rural areas could make sense, lots of open space for landing, sparse population and long drives for drivers,straightforward navigation and obstacle avoidance. But that's not something Quadcopters would be good for, these long-distance hauls, some sort of drone plane would make more sense.

I feel this is somewhat misguided, even a modern version of a pneumatic mail tube system would make more sense to me.

There many other much better use cases for drones and Quadcopters in other industries. I'd expect self-driving cars to have more impact on delivery.

[trhway]

>Quadcopter Drones are just not viable for delivery with current battery technology.

AMZN can allow itself to implement infrastructure/process to use something like Al metal-air cells. Stick in, stick out, sent resulting Al oxide to re-processing. You'll get efficiency and range of at least gas engine without mess/maintenance. There are more advanced schemas available (like potassium based - more energy dense, easier for reprocessing), unfortunately most of the money is in Li based schemas which would make sense only if Li were to be the main by weight component, which isn't going to happen in any near future.

>Wide use of overhead power lines in cities makes drone delivery unsafe in cities.

that just control/sensor problem, pure tech and very solvable issue.

>I feel this is somewhat misguided

we need to utilize 3D en-mass, in particular for transportation. Whatever industry starts it doesn't really matter in big picture ... End result anyway will be an autonomous octocopter for commute :) (the autonomous cars Google develops will be great for trucks which will roam roads empty of people carrying cars)

[merger]

Something just tells me transportation is not going to be the industry revolutionized by drones. I'm sure they'll revolutionize another industry, and another tech will revolutionize tansportation.

I guess at least companies are dreaming again and trying crazy ideas, aka "moonshots".

[trhway]

>I guess at least companies are dreaming again and trying crazy ideas, aka "moonshots".

Sitting on "moonshot" sized piles of cash and having engineering pools of that scale, one can expect that at least some would try ... I mean actual placement of Amazon logo on the Moon (like say using 100 "dots" - very bright LED array panels) would cost only something like few billion dollars.

[jsprogrammer]

Why do we need overhead power lines again? Distribute the generation of electricity (solar, fuel cell, wind) and connect it all via underground wiring.

[pingpongman56]

Underground is harder, you have to dig up land every time you want to fix or replace something, this can be mitigated but it still isn't that great. More importantly in urban areas digging up land is really hard (sidewalks, roads, residences, buildings, water pipes, sewage systems...), not to mention the politics!

[jsprogrammer]

What is there to fix or replace? A properly insulated transmission line should last indefinitely.

Stringing taut wires is also hard and they are more susceptible to damage which require constant fixing (see Connecticut ~4 years ago).

[rhino369]

Are gasoline quadcopters viable?

[NickNameNick]

Depends what you want to do,

Gas engines are heavy, compared to electric motors and lithium batteries, so for modest endurance flights, electric works out better now, but for long endurance flights gas or diesel would be better.

Curtis youngblood demo'd a nitromethane powered quad as seen here

http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/curtis-youngblood-single...

I can't imagine anyone would use a nitro powered platform for any commercial use, the fuel is too expensive and the motors require too much maintenance.

[jsprogrammer]

I don't think we need autonomous machines flying around polluting (noise and chemical) spaces.