4 ms·

Imagine how many trucks/vans/cars stay of the road. Imagine the reduced Pollution and noise because of that.

• postalrat 4y ago
  How many drone flights would it take to replace one days work from a single truck?
  • onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
    I can't imagine how it's physically possible for drones to use less energy. But it doesn't matter how many of them there are - they could be able to fly at an altitude where they don't cause meaningful noise pollution.
    • anonporridge 4y ago
      Saving energy is less important than cutting out human labor (drivers). For context, the global average cost for electricity is about $0.13 USD per kWH. From wikipedia, "Over an 8-hour work shift, an average, healthy, well-fed and motivated manual laborer may sustain an output of around 75 watts of power." [0] So, from a purely mechanical perspective, a human can only output about 0.6 kWH of work per day, which is only worth about $0.08 of electricity per day. And yet, in states like California, where this test is being done, human labor costs a minimum of $15/hour, or $120/day. Energy is not the limiting factor. We could use drastically more energy and still save gobs of money if we can cut the cost of employing a human out of the loop. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_power
      • bumby 4y ago
        I think this analogy is flawed. It's more apropos to the "John Henry" comparison, but most of human labor is not of that type since the industrial revolution. Humans are not walking packages the entire distance; we've already implemented mechanical and energy advantages in the form of road vehicles. Say someone drives a 200 horsepower car. That's roughly 1200 kWh/day of available mechanical power.