Why did We Hear 5 Years Ago That Online Orders Would Be Delivered By Drone, And This Is Nowhere Near Happening Yet?
In: Economics
We’ve been anticipating fusion power generation becoming the safer, and cheaper alternative to fission power to be here in twenty years for something like fifty years now. It’s something like that.
The issue in the US is the regulatory environment.
There is a provisional license that companies can get from the FAA to do commercial drone delivery in other locations through the UAS Beyond program, but its onerous to get, only allows a limited number of drones operating in limited areas, and requires a human to be able to take remote control of the drone at all times. If you are licensed as part of that program, the only area that you can do large scale unmanned drones is in a small part of Dallas (and only as of last Friday). You can deliver to other areas, but there are significant limitations on how, where, and when you can do that.
The short of why things aren’t moving faster is that the regulatory environment simply doesn’t exist for it. Unmanned delivery drones are treated the same as commercial cargo flights from a regulatory perspective. That means that your small Amazon drone flying 2 miles from their warehouse to your house is, from the FAA’s point of view, the same as a Fed Ex 747 flying from New York to Los Angeles. Congressional action is likely required before this changes substantially.
The EU regulatory environment for unmanned drones is even more restrictive, plus the high density of most EU cities means that the practicality of drone deliveries is a lot lower than it is in the US.
Getting back to the practicality of drones in high density areas – there was a big push to do drone deliveries in Japan a few years ago. The regulatory environment in Japan is very lax, so that wasn’t an issue. However, orders were close to 0 and all of those services have basically shut down.
The main issues the Japanese had were that drones couldn’t deliver directly to high medium and high density buildings. Instead, they would deliver to Amazon locker-esq drop off points, which were far enough away from most people that it defeated the purpose of ordering from Amazon style delivery services.
Same thing with fully automated delivery trucks. I worked in beer distribution for a while and all the drivers were getting upset about it. They’re still there, just bitching about something else,. I’m sure.
They needed to press that narrative to negotiate lower wages, worse benefits and more grueling metrics for human delivery drivers.
Nobody liked the robots that replaced the fast food workers, now they make 20 bucks an hour.
The last mile was never going to be by drone.
Drone parts buy a lot of meth.
They’ve been 10 years away from curing diabetes forever.
There is a meme, I forget the exact details, something about a genius college student inventing some groundbreaking way of doing something that would have an obvious impact on our lives. The screenshot includes the first comment which is, “Great! I can’t wait to never hear about this again.”
First off drone deliveries are real and are happening in limited areas in the US and other countries.
That being said its not easy to implement. Drones have limited range and carrying capacity, and can be blown around or grounded by harsh weather.
Drones have a bunch of FAA regulations on how high and how far they can fly limiting their range from the operator.
There are regulations on noise made by the drones.
Many times it might just be easier and cheaper to throw a box on a truck already heading that direction.
Here is a good video on it. The basic answer is a variety of issues, from cost, to a lot of airspace being closed for airport traffic, has made it difficult or uneconomical in most areas.
Here’s a great example of a solid use case for medicine distribution (and a cool video, too). [[link](https://youtu.be/DOWDNBu9DkU?si=BzgxlknIGErbXC4Z)]
That’s Because Someone Saying Something, Or Even Working On It, Doesn’t Mean That The Thing Is Actually Feasible, Either Technologically, Logistically Or Economically.
In Case Of Delivering Parcels It’s Still Easier And Cheaper To Get A Person In A Van To Do It.
Well…turns out fighting gravity is a really expensive way of moving stuff around and having a bunch of drones flying around is legally fraught.
Same reason we do freight with ships, rail and trucks in that order of preference instead of planes when possible.
It was a business fad people thought would be a special differentiatior.
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