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I also don't like how the rich get away with things - but is that the case here? Zipline's drones are probably better for the environment than ground vehicles b

by elil17 3y ago

I also don't like how the rich get away with things - but is that the case here? Zipline's drones are probably better for the environment than ground vehicles because they are small, light, and electric. They're also supposed to operate at 55 dB for people on the ground - similar to how noisy a delivery van is.

ericmay 3y ago
Yea I definitely think it's the case here. The thing about the delivery van is that it doesn't go away, we just add additional noise with the delivery drone. Delivery vans can be made to be electric as well to bring the noise down further and so you actually just get loud drones and quiet delivery vans. But the delivery drones are just one aspect. We're also going to get these flying taxis and those are going to suck too. Why invest or pay to maintain roads or highways or to build and improve sidewalks, bike lanes, busses, or rail lines when you can just take your air taxi directly to your landing spot and make sure to avoid contact with any humans along the way. A good lens that you can use to examine this technology is whether the drones and air taxis are additive or subtractive. Good technology tends to be subtractive, i.e. an iPhone replaced a lot of unnecessary things (of course it had some downsides). Sidewalks and bike lanes are another good example of subtractive technology. Additive technology would be something like a heated seat subscription, or these air taxis and drones. We're not really improving anything we're doing today, we're just adding to it. It's like feature creep.
- elil17 3y ago
  It's not clear to me why you think they won't reduce delivery van usage. It's hard for me to imagine that they would not. I'd also argue that more environmentally friendly, faster, potentially less expensive delivers are an improvement on what people are doing today. Air taxis are very different from a regulatory perspective (greater safety requirements) and from an engineering perspective (much heavier payloads). I don't really see this authorization as evidence that they will be approved in the future.
  - ericmay 3y ago
    > It's not clear to me why you think they won't reduce delivery van usage. It's hard for me to imagine that they would not. Sorry, I should have been more clear. I anticipate that they will have an effect, and that effect may be reduced usage, but I don't envision any reason they will totally replace delivery drivers. More likely, they'll complement delivery drivers. > I'd also argue that more environmentally friendly, faster, potentially less expensive delivers are an improvement on what people are doing today. Faster deliveries already happened. Even faster deliveries for the routine stuff that you buy seems like a needless feature. I know I don't need a set of wine glasses the same day or same hour, and if I did then I'll just plan better or deal with it. Especially if the trade off for me enjoying my back patio or something involves watching humming drones wizzing buy all day so someone can get some cheap plastic stuff delivered to them an hour faster... How do we get something faster, cheaper, and more environmentally friendly anyway? There's a trade-off somewhere. Maybe it's worth it, though I doubt it. It's hard to buy the environmental angle here when you could instead just reduce consumption. It seems more like greenwashing. Once you take away the environmental angle, you can see (or at least I do) how absurd the whole proposal of "drone delivery" really is. There could be some other, fantastic innovations though that really are subtractive instead of additive. Generally speaking if we aren't eliminating the usage of 1 or more things though we should be skeptical of the technology.
  - lotsoweiners 3y ago
    Sometimes when I’m doing yard work in the front yard I’ll notice the Amazon delivery truck come on my street. I’ll watch as it stops at about other or maybe every third house on the street and delivers something. I live in a suburban neighborhood with dozens of other streets very similar to mine. There are hundreds more streets like mine in the neighborhoods surrounding mine and I’m imagining a few handfuls of Amazon trucks are hitting these streets each day. Then I imagine the amount of drone’s required to replicate even a portion of these Amazon deliveries and it starts to make my head spin. I can imagine some use cases for the drone deliveries but there is no way I can imagine it replacing much of the current delivery system.

by elil17 3y ago

ericmay 3y ago

Yea I definitely think it's the case here. The thing about the delivery van is that it doesn't go away, we just add additional noise with the delivery drone. Delivery vans can be made to be electric as well to bring the noise down further and so you actually just get loud drones and quiet delivery vans. But the delivery drones are just one aspect. We're also going to get these flying taxis and those are going to suck too. Why invest or pay to maintain roads or highways or to build and improve sidewalks, bike lanes, busses, or rail lines when you can just take your air taxi directly to your landing spot and make sure to avoid contact with any humans along the way. A good lens that you can use to examine this technology is whether the drones and air taxis are additive or subtractive. Good technology tends to be subtractive, i.e. an iPhone replaced a lot of unnecessary things (of course it had some downsides). Sidewalks and bike lanes are another good example of subtractive technology. Additive technology would be something like a heated seat subscription, or these air taxis and drones. We're not really improving anything we're doing today, we're just adding to it. It's like feature creep.

elil17 3y ago
It's not clear to me why you think they won't reduce delivery van usage. It's hard for me to imagine that they would not. I'd also argue that more environmentally friendly, faster, potentially less expensive delivers are an improvement on what people are doing today. Air taxis are very different from a regulatory perspective (greater safety requirements) and from an engineering perspective (much heavier payloads). I don't really see this authorization as evidence that they will be approved in the future.
- ericmay 3y ago
  > It's not clear to me why you think they won't reduce delivery van usage. It's hard for me to imagine that they would not. Sorry, I should have been more clear. I anticipate that they will have an effect, and that effect may be reduced usage, but I don't envision any reason they will totally replace delivery drivers. More likely, they'll complement delivery drivers. > I'd also argue that more environmentally friendly, faster, potentially less expensive delivers are an improvement on what people are doing today. Faster deliveries already happened. Even faster deliveries for the routine stuff that you buy seems like a needless feature. I know I don't need a set of wine glasses the same day or same hour, and if I did then I'll just plan better or deal with it. Especially if the trade off for me enjoying my back patio or something involves watching humming drones wizzing buy all day so someone can get some cheap plastic stuff delivered to them an hour faster... How do we get something faster, cheaper, and more environmentally friendly anyway? There's a trade-off somewhere. Maybe it's worth it, though I doubt it. It's hard to buy the environmental angle here when you could instead just reduce consumption. It seems more like greenwashing. Once you take away the environmental angle, you can see (or at least I do) how absurd the whole proposal of "drone delivery" really is. There could be some other, fantastic innovations though that really are subtractive instead of additive. Generally speaking if we aren't eliminating the usage of 1 or more things though we should be skeptical of the technology.
- lotsoweiners 3y ago
  Sometimes when I’m doing yard work in the front yard I’ll notice the Amazon delivery truck come on my street. I’ll watch as it stops at about other or maybe every third house on the street and delivers something. I live in a suburban neighborhood with dozens of other streets very similar to mine. There are hundreds more streets like mine in the neighborhoods surrounding mine and I’m imagining a few handfuls of Amazon trucks are hitting these streets each day. Then I imagine the amount of drone’s required to replicate even a portion of these Amazon deliveries and it starts to make my head spin. I can imagine some use cases for the drone deliveries but there is no way I can imagine it replacing much of the current delivery system.