Amazon’s vision of drone delivery, once a futuristic concept, has now taken flight in Phoenix, Arizona, where the company has officially begun delivering packages via drones to customers. CNBC’s Kate Rooney, reporting from Phoenix, highlighted that Amazon (AMZN) has been testing these drones across the U.S. for years, but only recently started live deliveries in the Phoenix metro area.
These drones are designed for smaller items, like those that would fit in a shoebox, weighing 5 pounds or less. An example given during the report was the delivery of a Jenga game. Customers opting for drone delivery pay an additional $10 for the expedited service, which also requires them to specify a drop-off location on their property map.
Over the years, Amazon has made significant design changes to its drones. The noise level has been reduced by about 40%, and their range has effectively doubled. Additionally, the drones have been adapted to handle interactions with dogs, which tend to chase them, through specific design modifications.
Rooney spoke with Amazon executive David Carbon, who previously spent nearly a decade at Boeing (BA). Carbon described the management of airspace as the primary challenge but emphasized that drones are meant to complement, not replace, traditional delivery methods. He stated, “At the end of the day, we’re gonna need every facet of delivery that we can get our hands on. There’s not enough people on earth to deliver how much people are gonna order. So I don’t see this impacting that at all. This is about speed. It’s not about anything else. It’s about safety and speed.”
The drones in use are the MK30 models, which received FAA approval back in October. The drone site in Phoenix is directly integrated with Amazon’s same-day fulfillment center, a strategic move to scale the program swiftly. Amazon plans to expand to new cities next year, with an ambitious goal of achieving 500 million drone deliveries per year, each within 30 minutes or less. So far, though, they’ve only managed thousands of deliveries, highlighting the significant gap to their target.
Amazon isn’t alone in this space, as competitors like Google (GOOG, GOOGL) and Walmart (WMT) are also making strides in drone delivery, indicating that the skies might soon be busier with these futuristic delivery solutions.
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