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> when your lunch only weighs a few ounces, delivering it in 2-ton gas powered vehicles is wildly inefficient Seems absurd when it's put like that. This is pos
by nomilk 3y ago
> when your lunch only weighs a few ounces, delivering it in 2-ton gas powered vehicles is wildly inefficient
Seems absurd when it's put like that. This is possibly something we'll look back on and struggle to comprehend how it was ever the go-to solution.
- RC_ITR 3y agoSorry for being an annoying biker - but only if we built communities where deliveries could happen on human-powered <50kg vehicles. No, let's instead try to game the superlinear scaling of power to weight in helicopters!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bnegreve 3y agoThe size of these vehicles is certainly absurd, but flying packages with drones that consume most of their energy to fight gravity does not seem particularly efficient either, (e.g. compared to small road electric vehicles with the same payload, which would have its own practical problems).
- XorNot 3y agoAircraft are more energy efficient then cars[1] at scale. But even a light plane like a Cessna 172 does 13L/100KM[2] depending on flight speed. Certainly more then my Prius, but it can take a much more direct route too. There's also the simple practical issue: self-driving cars can't navigate a complex crowded environment, whereas self-flying planes navigate a much simpler environment with many more regulatory controls on behavior. [1] https://www.sustainablebusiness.com/2014/02/surprisingly-airplanes-more-energy-efficient-than-cars-52127/ https://www.sustainablebusiness.com/2014/02/surprisingly-air... [2] https://www.flyouts.com/vliegtuig/cessna-172 https://www.flyouts.com/vliegtuig/cessna-172
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- cma 3y agoIf Prius was adapted to run optimally on extremely high octane leaded fuel what could it get?
- baq 3y agoThe Prius doesn’t fly, so let’s not repeat the leaded fuel mistake.
- bombcar 3y agoHigh octane does NOT increase total available power, in fact it reduces it. It enables higher compression so you can get more power per unit of engine weight, but the fuel efficiency per gallon is lower. And the lead is for the valves. You can get more efficient planes but you can’t overcome the need to fight gravity at some point.
- cma 3y agoI thought higher octane improved efficiency by avoiding premature combustion, but that may have only been relevant before electronic fuel injection.
- deely3 3y ago> Aircraft are more energy efficient then cars[1] at scale. Some aircraft and definitely not drons for now.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- madacol 3y agozipline's "platform 1" is an airplane, and "platform 2" is a quadcopter shaped like an airplane. https://www.flyzipline.com/technology https://www.flyzipline.com/technology So they should have much better efficiency than typical quadcopters
- crooked-v 3y agoThe actual harm from the drone's wasted energy is pretty negligible aside from the waste heat itself, though, as compared to the many, many side effects of road vehicles of any kind (for example, just starting with the air pollution from tire particles). Of course, that equation changes a bit once there are enough drones that noise pollution and collisions or other incidents become a real issue.
- algas 3y agoNoise pollution and collisions are a much, much larger problem with cars, since they're constrained to two dimensions while drones can use three. Plus, cars tend to kill people when they collide with each other (or with pedestrians), and drones would not. Hopefully they will all use engineered quiet propellers (such as Zipline uses) and electric engines (similarly).
- fragmede 3y ago> Plus, cars tend to kill people... and drones would not. I think this is an good move by the FAA, but I also think that if one of these airplanes flew right into my head at full speed, I'd die.
- bombcar 3y agoPeople are ingenious at getting killed, and birds can do it so eventually if we have enough drones someone will die to one. However, much mini deliveries could be done with vehicles smaller than a full size car - and places where it is common you see lots of mopeds and similar. People still can die to them.
- brandensilva 3y agoIt seems like a drone falling out of the sky could still kill people. It just seems less likely to us because there aren't as many right now to worry about like cars. I like these devices for use for medical supplies but do worry how polluted the skies could become when multiple companies are flying these things for standard packages.
- prawn 3y agoOK, what about if our supermarkets are actually really tall buildings, and the drones glide down from the distribution platform on the top floor...
- falcor84 3y agoThat sounds pretty much the same as existing "catolog stores"[0] like Argos[1] (although your idea is probably a bit more automated). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalog_merchant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalog_merchant [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argos_(retailer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argos_(retailer)
- concordDance 3y agoIdeally you'd use little remote controlled electric cars, but driving on the ground is a MUCH more complex problem.
- amelius 3y agoWith a sufficient number of drones in the air simultaneously, this becomes a far more difficult problem.
- heylook 3y agoOnly if you assume there is no regulator or shared protocol.
- amelius 3y agoAnyway, I guess the main problem is that most people will not want a sky full of drones just so that some random Joes can get their stuff from Amazon or AliExpress a little sooner.
- wuiheerfoj 3y agoI imagine people felt the same way when cars were popularised, but we‘ll get used to the convenience
- amelius 3y agoThis time it's different because we know where it might lead to.
- m_fayer 3y agoIf the skies fill with drones while traffic jams ease, there’s less double parking for delivery, and streets generally start looking more airy, people may make the association.
- 3y ago
- reacweb 3y agoThe existence of migratory birds proves that the loss of energy due to the Earth's gravitational pull is not so catastrophic. A vehicle in motion also loses energy because of the friction of the wheels. Above a certain speed, air friction becomes the most significant loss. The comparison of the energy balance of a vehicle on the road compared with a vehicle in the air is not as clear-cut. Vehicles on wheels are much heavier and require infrastructure (roads) that must be taken into account.
- abtinf 3y agoYou may have noticed that migratory birds have a somewhat different mechanism of flight than typical drones.
- singularity2001 3y agozipline has wings
- tyingq 3y agoThey do show that: https://www.flyzipline.com/technology https://www.flyzipline.com/technology (scroll down, it first shows the thing that it drops, rather than the drone itself.) Lots of CGI and notices about "simulated" though. The videos that appear to maybe be real show something that does have wings, but looks too small/light/thin to carry much around.
- Philip-J-Fry 3y agoThe ones they are currently using in Africa are normal drone planes. They drop their payload without stopping though, so the payload has to be packed securely and nothing that can break easily. So it's used for medical supplies. This what Mark Rober's video was about. If they were to create a drone that can deliver arbitrary packages, then it needs to be able to lower a package safely. That's what those renders are, they show a typical multi-rotar drone with small wings. So it can stop and lower a package. I don't think there's any real footage of these yet.
- pontusrehula 3y agoWhere I live we can get deliveries by starships https://www.starship.xyz/ https://www.starship.xyz/. The vehicles are kind of cute when you see them in action.
- NikolaNovak 3y agoOk that seems like far more practical idea
- throwaway94250 3y agoThey seem practical until you realize how easy it is to steal one.
- bombcar 3y agoThe starships on the road are free you can just take them I have 458 starships. Those wheels look moderately impractical- larger wheels might have more clearance. Reminds me that we had pneumatic tubes and miniature railways between buildings a century ago.
- stevekemp 3y agoThey do look cute, I remember being completely taken-aback the first time I saw one in the wild - I had to resist the temptation to stand in front of it, to see what would happen. Though I did wonder how they'll cope in winter-weather. I can't imagine they'd do so well on snow/ice.
- kwhitefoot 3y agoBut there are plenty of places that don't have much snow and ice where they should be perfectly practical. Ice shouldn't be a problem, they could swap to studded tyres in the winter just like we do for cars here in Norway. Snow would be a much bigger problem though I agree!
- 93po 3y agoI'd encourage you to stand in front of it. Commercializing public walkways like this is fine, I guess, but as a human walking around for non-commercial reasons, I feel like you have the right to do whatever you want (within reason) that doesn't impact other humans.
- ptman 3y agohttps://www.starship.xyz/ https://www.starship.xyz/
- bluescrn 3y agoIn a crime-free utopia, they could be useful. Or maybe within a large corporate campus type environment. But 'on the streets' in the real world, they're just targets for vandalism and theft.
- falcor84 3y agoCouldn't that be said about humans? As I understand it, once upon a time in some parts of the world, walking alone unarmed could get you abducted and sold into slavery. But then we decided as a society that we want to have this "Human Rights" thing and now most of us feel relatively safe about other people on the street not randomly abducting or assaulting us. So I'm just not getting the argument for why we can't trust humans to not vandalize or steal robots, especially internet-connected ones that constantly film their surroundings. I for one believe that just like we can learn to be civil to one another, and can also extend our civility to other species (e.g. we generally don't go around kicking dogs we see on the street), we can also be civil to robots.
- krapp 3y agoIt depends. Somewhere like Japan, with a strong cultural sense of societal cohesion and obligation, it could work. But I live in a country where "societal cohesion" and "obligations" are considered communist propaganda and our constitution gives us the right to as many guns as we want in case we decide to hunt the government for sport. I mean, this robot[0] make it all the way across the Netherlands and Germany, and only 300 miles into the US before getting beheaded. [0]https://www.cnn.com/2015/08/03/us/hitchbot-robot-beheaded-philadelphia-feat/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2015/08/03/us/hitchbot-robot-beheaded-ph...
- kwhitefoot 3y agoThey are already in use in the UK.
- jcims 3y agoSure but there's a tradeoff with ground transport. A drone can make the trip with much shorter traveled distance and potentially higher speed, resulting in higher utilization per vehicle. It also doesn't interfere with road traffic, which could have externalities in longer idle time for other vehicles at intersections and whatnot. Both are better than Garret in his 2007 Ford Explorer driving around town all day delivering timbits and tacos.
- dwighttk 3y agoGarret’ll get there in a hurricane though
- wolfram74 3y agoI was raised to consider ordering takeout in truly awful weather as pretty rude.
- randmeerkat 3y ago> I was raised to consider ordering takeout in truly awful weather as pretty rude. What’s more rude? Ordering takeout in bad weather, or not ordering takeout and indirectly punishing the delivery driver’s livelihood whenever the weather is bad..?
- crazygringo 3y agoI realize that has good intentions, but it's actually terrible advice. Delivery drivers are paid basically solely with your tips. If you don't order, they don't make any money that day. If you want to be nice, order that delivery, but tip more. Bad weather is actually their favorite because people tip more.
- philsnow 3y agoThere might be different ideas of what makes “bad” weather. Some Californians think that any weather at all is bad, and some midwesterners think “there’s no such thing as bad weather, only wrong clothing”. I wouldn’t hesitate to order delivery if it were raining or snowing, but maybe in this world there are people who would still order delivery during a tornado warning (because that way they don’t have to risk driving during a tornado).
- newsclues 3y agoBikes for local rapid delivery are hard to beat.
- bombcar 3y agoDrones schmones. Miniature zeppelins is where it’s at. Bouyancy to just below negative so very little energy needed to lift the device.
- dgacmu 3y agoIt's been studied; drones are somewhat better: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-02411-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-02411-5 E-bike courriers are probably better still but drones are probably faster if you can make them work. A lot depends on the delivery pattern, of course.
- myself248 3y agoNice thing about drones is they're unlikely to kill anyone if they crash, and they're not sharing the roads with cars in the first place. In some places, bikes are first-class citizens of the road, but in other places they're very much not respected and riding one is tantamount to suicide. Every single cyclist I know, when they meet another cyclist, immediately asks about gnarliest injuries and they compare scars like dogs sniffing each other's butts. And in the past 20 years I've lost more friends to cycling fatalities than any other cause of death. I'll take the drones, thankyouverymuch.
- jauntywundrkind 3y agoI struggle with it already. It hurts seeing it. And I live in such a lovely city. I can bike anywhere so quickly, so easily. Scooters & micromobility are abundant. But so many people (so many roommates over time) make a habit of ordering delivery, on such a regular basis. It's unfathomable to me: both the negative impact in general, and particularly here where it's so close & pleasant to go walk or bike around. It's such a huge expense to the world, and such a great enriching activity, getting a little walkabout.
- ghaff 3y agoNot everyone bikes or uses scooters. I don't. But, if I'm in a city, I'll certainly walk someplace rather than getting a food delivery which I haven't had since... I really couldn't tell you when.
- true_religion 3y agoWhen I was in the city, I'd order delivery from the restaurants on our street. The waiter would just walk up, and hand the food to me. Delivery apps just made people get food from a larger variety of places. Before them, you'd order from the pizzaria that's on the route home, and pick up up before jumping back on the subway. Or you'd eat at the diner on your block.
- shafyy 3y agoThis might be news to some people, but there are other modes of transportation / delivery than 2-ton cars. "2-ton cars vs. flying drones" is a false dichotomy.
- Maken 3y agoIndeed, they are ignoring the much more efficient and eco-friendly "low-paid worker on a bike" alternative.
- shafyy 3y agoThis is a policy problem, not a tech problem. People need to be paid a living wage, period. The lack of this and the subsidizing of delivery fees by VC money has led people to believe it's somehow sustainable to sit on your lazy ass, order food and have it delivered within 30 min for next to nothing. Or maybe people know that it's not sustainable but just don't give a shit. Greedy corporations and unethical people will always exists, that's why we need better laws.
- mrd3v0 3y agoI'd say it IS a tech problem as much as it is a policy problem. Technology historically has allowed humanity to develop society in a way that constantly minimises risk, reduces "hard labour" tasks, and delegates repetitive "brainless" work to computers. Only with technology could these policies come into fruition. Otherwise, we would be effectively shutting down industries completely, and as far as I am aware this rarely if ever happens. I do believe minimum wage should be set at the local living wage standard, and that companies like Uber are exploiting their workers through weak labour laws, but unless the market is much more tightly controlled, in a somewhat-free market (which is most of the world) economy, it is a tech issue.
- shafyy 3y agoNo, no. We're talking about food delivery here, which is a purely luxury need and market. This is not a problem tech needs to solve.
- nobrains 3y agoIn the so called "developing" countries, delivery app deliveries are mostly on light motor bikes and even ebikes.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pastage 3y agoAccording to zipline[1] it is still better than motorcycles at least. Considering we are talking about 100km, I would not consider a bicycle an option for such small packages. That said for me delivering a package by bicycle+ train + bycycle is an option but it will always be more expensive unless you can stand long delivery times. [1] https://www.flyzipline.com/newsroom/stories/research-insights/a-first-ever-look-at-the-sustainability-of-autonomous-aerial-logistics https://www.flyzipline.com/newsroom/stories/research-insight...
- datameta 3y agoThe vast vast majority of couriers in NYC are on e-bikes or mopeds.
- akmittal 3y agoMost of the work use mopads/motorcycles for delivery. A lot more efficient than cars. Here in India a lot of delivery services moved to electric 2 wheelers
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoSpeaking as someone who just goes downstairs and makes a sandwich, or who takes some to work, ordering lunch seems absurd to me. Is it that cheap in the US / do you earn that much? Food culture is so weird over there.
- diydsp 3y agoI see a dichotomy... many colleagues bring lunches to work in e.g. glass microwaveable containers, but many have an "ick" abt prepping their own food. A huge "tax" on the lazy.
- blincoln 3y agoIt's not cheap. When I still worked in the city, I was always blown away by how much of their salary most of my coworkers were willing to spend on restaurant lunches every day. Typically I would expect a restaurant lunch in a major city in the US to cost $20-$40 per person after taxes and tip.[1] So, essentially $5,000 - $10,000/year. This was for people with salaries running from about $50,000 - $200,000 before income tax, so something like 7% - 20% of their after-tax income. Making a lunch and bringing it instead should be less than half of that, especially if one makes extra food for dinner and brings the leftovers for lunch the next day, but I guess a lot of people actively dislike cooking for themselves. A decent amount of tech workers also get dinner at restaurants nearly every day, which is of course even more expensive. [1] Excluding inexpensive franchises like McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, because my coworkers typically did not get lunch at places like that.
- ghaff 3y agoWhen I worked in the city Chinatown was pretty cheap but I agree in general. Going out every day, especially for a reasonably healthy lunch, adds up.
- TheCoelacanth 3y agoCompared to the richest countries like Norway or Switzerland it's cheap. Compared to everywhere else, Americans make more.
- JKCalhoun 3y agoMaybe we should be asking why we order a few-ounce lunch at all? There was a time when ordering lunch was reserved for when you were already "on the town" shopping and the like. Even debating what mode of transportation should be used seems to miss the larger issue and is even kind of gross to my mind.
- sotix 3y agoAgreed. Something I commonly observe, which I’m guilty of too, is getting so excited about technological innovation that we can’t see the forest for the trees. I get that the idea of being able to order a sub sandwich on a whim and have it delivered directly to you via a drone is really cool, but why not plan ahead and bring it with you? One could also go to a sandwich shop next to where they work. My coworkers and I would walk to the sandwich shop next to our office once per week when I still worked in an office. Seems remarkably less wasteful and more efficient all around. I don’t see it ever happening, but I’m not even sure we need package delivery available for anything every day of the week. If we limited it to once per week for bulkier items (such as large furniture), we could reduce a lot of waste and traffic. Rather than deliver tiny lunches via drone, perhaps we should reconsider the greater idea of ordering objects. As someone without a car in a car-dependent city, it’s certainly on my mind. And this doesn’t expand into societal implications of ordering everything without interacting with other humans. That’s perhaps a more interesting conversation!
- 6stringmerc 3y agoNow if only robots could make the lunches too. Or wait, just replace the humans in need of delivery with robots or AI. Disruption!
- walleeee 3y agoSingle meal delivery as an institution is wildly inefficient. The absurd inefficiency of the car as delivery vehicle does not make drones a meaningfully wiser choice. For every proposed technology, we need desperately to ask: does this really make ecological sense? Delivering necessities (e.g. medicine) to a remote township with a drone makes sense. Drone-drop pizzas do not.
- Retric 3y agoDelivery vehicles for packages aren’t traveling very far between stops. A 2 ton vehicle dropping off 200 packages on a 100 mile delivery route is averaging 0.5 miles per package and 0.125 kWh where a drone might need to fly 15 miles each way per packages = 30 miles to and from some central hub to do those same routes. Drones are light, but 0.125 kWh to fly 30 miles seems unlikely. Food delivery might be a better comparison, but 2 pizzas and a 2 liter soda is heavy enough to need a fairly massive drone.
- moffkalast 3y agoThe drone would still be the better option. Electric motors and propellers don't produce any pollution, unlike combustion engines and/or car tyres. And of course the obvious part where it removes hundreds of thousands of vans from already massively congested road traffic. The skies remain mostly unused.
- Retric 3y agoDrones aren’t necessarily electric, and cars can be EV so that doesn’t favor one over the other. Pollution wise you need to consider the lifecycle of a drone which is likely far worse than a van. Many drones are using very dirty small internal combustion engines. Safety wise replacing 1 van with 30+ heavy drones each traveling far more could easily favor the van.
- moffkalast 3y agoAny solution that isn't a stopgap is necessarily electric given climate change, and while EVs do reduce CO2 emissions they increase particle emissions from heavy tyre use by 20% (given their massive weight), which is arguably even worse for residential use. Anything that is in contact with the ground will produce some kind of particle pollution.
- Retric 3y agoThe extremely limited flight times and weather conditions you get from electric drones means large scale drone deployments will likely require small internal combustion engines and all the associated pollution from that. Some hybrid approaches where a land vehicle uses fully electric drones for drop off have been prototyped, but they don’t reduce tire ware. Longer term it’s more debatable but we hand waving delivery drones as completely pollution free when we don’t know what from they would actually take is simply wishful thinking.
- solarpunk 3y agoThis is why bike delivery is ideal.
- dahart 3y agoAt least a delivery vehicle is amortizing by delivering multiple lunches to multiple people in a single trip. When someone drives themselves to lunch, they’re using a 2-ton vehicle for a single lunch.
- paxys 3y agoDelivering single boxes of lunch in two ton vehicles isn't really common anywhere in the world outside of the US and maybe a handful more countries.
- marcosdumay 3y agoTo be fair, it's almost certainly delivered by a motorcycle. But that's still hundreds of kilograms.
- seoulmetro 3y agoThat's because it is absurd. The same way any convenience is absurd. Most of the deliveries around the world are done by motorbikes though, not only that but they are done not one at a time but in big chunks. Which is not absurd and pretty good.