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But that truck can deliver hundreds of those boxes at a time. So it's one truck versus a huge swarm of drones. (Some of which may drop that 1kg box on someone's

But that truck can deliver hundreds of those boxes at a time. So it's one truck versus a huge swarm of drones. (Some of which may drop that 1kg box on someone's head.) Difficult to imagine a case for this delivery method other than pure instant gratification.

throwawayReply 10y ago
When you're dealing with 1 hour deliveries, those trucks aren't delivering "hundreds of boxes", they're actually still making a lot of smaller trips because they can't batch efficiently due to delivery time commitments.
- sevenless 10y ago
  It's beyond a joke that Amazon, a company famous for not paying tax, profits from massive wasteful exploitation and over-use of taxpayer-funded roads to make very fast deliveries, contributing to traffic and pollution everyone else has to put up with. If anything this makes a strong case for a luxury tax on ultra-premium delivery services.
  - gonvaled 10y ago
    Or for a proper pricing of infrastructure costs: everybody who uses the roads should pay for them, according to the use they make (heavier trucks should pay more than bicycles)
    - sevenless 10y ago
      This is one of these suggestions that sounds reasonable and would be dreadful in practice. We should encourage people to cycle or take public transport. Cycling frees up roads and makes people healthier. Charging cyclists would decrease cycling, disproportionately impact the poorest, and hurt public health (I'd make a case we should actually pay people to cycle). Likewise charging to use cars, in locations where there's no good public transit, would be terrible for the poor. The amount of damage done to roads by vehicles scales as something like the fourth power of weight at the axles, so the repair cost of cycling is nil, anyway. Everyone benefits from roads one way or the other, so the cost of roads and infrastructure should be spread. It's not an ethical issue, just a matter of who can afford to pay. Bill Gates profits greatly from his employees having infrastructure by which they can get to work, even if he doesn't drive. That's kind of the whole point of having a state.
      - gonvaled 10y ago
        You charge 1€/1000 km for bicycle for road use, and give a 100€/100km tax credit for health impact. That is my pricing model.
WillPostForFood 10y ago
As you say, trucks are dangerous, they are burning fossil fuels, they are contributing to traffic. Those are all valid reasons to move to drones beyond instant gratification. Trucks can't deliver hundreds of boxes at a time, they can deliver hundreds of boxes during a day of driving. The quora post linked below suggests between 200-500 a day. Depending on length of flight, you might be able to replace a truck that delivers 200 packages with 5 drones delivering 4 packages an hour, while limiting flights to 10 hours a day. A huge swarm isn't necessarily needed. https://www.quora.com/How-many-packages-does-a-UPS-delivery-driver-deliver-per-day-on-average https://www.quora.com/How-many-packages-does-a-UPS-delivery-...
- sevenless 10y ago
  Well, trucks don't have to burn fossil fuels either. There's no reason we can't switch to electric trucks, which will be quiet and won't pollute (at least in their location). As for danger and traffic, I'd be surprised if low-altitude air traffic, air collisions and falling objects didn't become an issue in a world where delivery drones were commonplace. It stands to reason that rolling boxes in bulk around on wheels should be a lot more energy efficient and reliable than flying individual boxes around in the air. I'm sure drones have a place, but they can't replace bulk delivery.
  - IanCal 10y ago
    > It stands to reason that rolling boxes in bulk around on wheels should be a lot more energy efficient and reliable than flying individual boxes around in the air. Not necessarily. It would stand to reason if you were comparing identical routes, but we're not. Rolling around the boxes in bulk requires travelling in quite restricted ways, through often congested areas, and because it's in bulk needs to travel to every location on the route. So the final box has been carried far further than the distance it needed to. How much more efficient could you make your route in a normal truck if you were able to remove, say, 5 boxes from your load. That's 5 locations you can take away from your overall plan. How many truck miles can you remove from your journey? How many drone miles must you add?
Ma8ee 10y ago
Not at a time. The truck can use street-space, make noise and pollute while driving around with a load of packages that is going to other addresses than the one it is currently heading to. The truck will probably travel a smaller distance in total than all the drones would, but my guess is that the total impact of the truck driving around is larger that the total impact of the drones. In particular if they manage to make the drones less noisy. The best is probably a hybrid system where a truck filled with drones charged with packages drives to the right part of the town and releases all the drones for the last kilometers of transport.
IanCal 10y ago
> But that truck can deliver hundreds of those boxes at a time. So it's one truck versus a huge swarm of drones. Well, it'd be multiple drones sure but "a huge swarm" is a bit of a stretch. 100 boxes might be 10 trips for 10 drones. At up to 50mph and a 20 mile round trip, they could get through quite a few trips. Just because there's the talk of "within 30 minutes" doesn't mean everything has to be done in 30 minutes. > (Some of which may drop that 1kg box on someone's head.) And some of the trucks will hit a kid in the road. Unless we're talking actual numbers and rates, any of these things are pretty useless for comparing the two methods. > Difficult to imagine a case for this delivery method other than pure instant gratification. Efficiencies, possibly? What's the energy cost of bringing a big truck with lots of parcels vs lots of smaller deliveries with lighter drones? How many people will travel into a city to buy an item currently sooner than it could be delivered? Could we cut out those trips? They're massively inefficient if you're driving, picking something up and just heading back. A physical item I want to send to someone fairly close by requires me to take it to someone to put into a system which moves it from building to building, through a distribution centre, then onto a truck to drive to their house. Or (though I don't actually have a car) I need to drive it there myself. Couldn't a drone just pick it up and take it there? Or a series of drone transfers?

throwawayReply 10y ago

When you're dealing with 1 hour deliveries, those trucks aren't delivering "hundreds of boxes", they're actually still making a lot of smaller trips because they can't batch efficiently due to delivery time commitments.

sevenless 10y ago
It's beyond a joke that Amazon, a company famous for not paying tax, profits from massive wasteful exploitation and over-use of taxpayer-funded roads to make very fast deliveries, contributing to traffic and pollution everyone else has to put up with. If anything this makes a strong case for a luxury tax on ultra-premium delivery services.
- gonvaled 10y ago
  Or for a proper pricing of infrastructure costs: everybody who uses the roads should pay for them, according to the use they make (heavier trucks should pay more than bicycles)
  - sevenless 10y ago
    This is one of these suggestions that sounds reasonable and would be dreadful in practice. We should encourage people to cycle or take public transport. Cycling frees up roads and makes people healthier. Charging cyclists would decrease cycling, disproportionately impact the poorest, and hurt public health (I'd make a case we should actually pay people to cycle). Likewise charging to use cars, in locations where there's no good public transit, would be terrible for the poor. The amount of damage done to roads by vehicles scales as something like the fourth power of weight at the axles, so the repair cost of cycling is nil, anyway. Everyone benefits from roads one way or the other, so the cost of roads and infrastructure should be spread. It's not an ethical issue, just a matter of who can afford to pay. Bill Gates profits greatly from his employees having infrastructure by which they can get to work, even if he doesn't drive. That's kind of the whole point of having a state.
    - gonvaled 10y ago
      You charge 1€/1000 km for bicycle for road use, and give a 100€/100km tax credit for health impact. That is my pricing model.

WillPostForFood 10y ago

As you say, trucks are dangerous, they are burning fossil fuels, they are contributing to traffic. Those are all valid reasons to move to drones beyond instant gratification. Trucks can't deliver hundreds of boxes at a time, they can deliver hundreds of boxes during a day of driving. The quora post linked below suggests between 200-500 a day. Depending on length of flight, you might be able to replace a truck that delivers 200 packages with 5 drones delivering 4 packages an hour, while limiting flights to 10 hours a day. A huge swarm isn't necessarily needed. https://www.quora.com/How-many-packages-does-a-UPS-delivery-driver-deliver-per-day-on-average https://www.quora.com/How-many-packages-does-a-UPS-delivery-...

sevenless 10y ago
Well, trucks don't have to burn fossil fuels either. There's no reason we can't switch to electric trucks, which will be quiet and won't pollute (at least in their location). As for danger and traffic, I'd be surprised if low-altitude air traffic, air collisions and falling objects didn't become an issue in a world where delivery drones were commonplace. It stands to reason that rolling boxes in bulk around on wheels should be a lot more energy efficient and reliable than flying individual boxes around in the air. I'm sure drones have a place, but they can't replace bulk delivery.
- IanCal 10y ago
  > It stands to reason that rolling boxes in bulk around on wheels should be a lot more energy efficient and reliable than flying individual boxes around in the air. Not necessarily. It would stand to reason if you were comparing identical routes, but we're not. Rolling around the boxes in bulk requires travelling in quite restricted ways, through often congested areas, and because it's in bulk needs to travel to every location on the route. So the final box has been carried far further than the distance it needed to. How much more efficient could you make your route in a normal truck if you were able to remove, say, 5 boxes from your load. That's 5 locations you can take away from your overall plan. How many truck miles can you remove from your journey? How many drone miles must you add?

Ma8ee 10y ago

Not at a time. The truck can use street-space, make noise and pollute while driving around with a load of packages that is going to other addresses than the one it is currently heading to. The truck will probably travel a smaller distance in total than all the drones would, but my guess is that the total impact of the truck driving around is larger that the total impact of the drones. In particular if they manage to make the drones less noisy. The best is probably a hybrid system where a truck filled with drones charged with packages drives to the right part of the town and releases all the drones for the last kilometers of transport.

IanCal 10y ago

> But that truck can deliver hundreds of those boxes at a time. So it's one truck versus a huge swarm of drones. Well, it'd be multiple drones sure but "a huge swarm" is a bit of a stretch. 100 boxes might be 10 trips for 10 drones. At up to 50mph and a 20 mile round trip, they could get through quite a few trips. Just because there's the talk of "within 30 minutes" doesn't mean everything has to be done in 30 minutes. > (Some of which may drop that 1kg box on someone's head.) And some of the trucks will hit a kid in the road. Unless we're talking actual numbers and rates, any of these things are pretty useless for comparing the two methods. > Difficult to imagine a case for this delivery method other than pure instant gratification. Efficiencies, possibly? What's the energy cost of bringing a big truck with lots of parcels vs lots of smaller deliveries with lighter drones? How many people will travel into a city to buy an item currently sooner than it could be delivered? Could we cut out those trips? They're massively inefficient if you're driving, picking something up and just heading back. A physical item I want to send to someone fairly close by requires me to take it to someone to put into a system which moves it from building to building, through a distribution centre, then onto a truck to drive to their house. Or (though I don't actually have a car) I need to drive it there myself. Couldn't a drone just pick it up and take it there? Or a series of drone transfers?