First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and 60 Minutes
In all of the criticism, I haven't seen anything remarking on the energy cost for this. I can hear a strawman in the audience saying "But drones are tiny/electric/cheap!" Not at these scales. Consider the (lack of) efficiency of quadcopters, the weights and distances involved, and the total sales volume for this service in even a small test market. I'd buy that flight itself is a viable option over wheeled vehicles when you consider more direct transit, reduction in delays due to traffic, and the reduction in weight of the delivery vehicle, but I'd imagine this advantage would only exist for fixed-wing delivery vehicles, not quad/hex/octo-copters.<p>$20 says that if this ever happens in the real world, the delivery vehicles are mechanically <i>very</i> different from what's shown in the promo video.