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What if a drone costs 100x less than a delivery driver? You can have 100 drones out delivery packages for the same cost of one delivery driver delivering one pa

What if a drone costs 100x less than a delivery driver? You can have 100 drones out delivery packages for the same cost of one delivery driver delivering one package at a time. It would be interesting to see data on what % of amazon purchases are above the payload of a drone - i imagine they crunched the numbers themselves and determined it was low enough to justify continuing to push this issue (even after the FAA tried to ban[1] drone deliveries altogether) Theyll look at $/package and time/package for drones and delivery drivers. I imagine once you account for driver salary and benefits, cost of vehicles, cost of fuel and maintenance, cost of insurance for drivers and vehicles, cost of management structure to maintain drivers, schedules, routes, etc - the $/package for drones likely make up for any disadvantage they currently have in time/package Also, drones can deliver packages 24/7/365, no reason you cant wake up to a package delivered overnight (maybe even your morning kindle (tm) e-ink newspaper) [1]http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/24/faa-bans-the-use-of-drones-to-deliver-packages/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/24/faa-bans-the-use-of-drones-...

brianobush 11y ago
24/7/365 seems overly optimistic, weather alone will most likely cut out many of those trips. Depending on the type of collision avoidance technology used may further limit night time operation.
ams6110 11y ago
As drones and other autonomous machine/robots start to replace human employees, I expect to hear calls to tax them to recoup the social externalities. If they are taxed enough, then there is no longer an advantage to using them over human employees. The fallacy in that thinking is left as an exercise for the reader.
- eru 11y ago
  The externalities might be smaller than the profit. Ie even with all externalities internalized via taxes, it might still beat humans.
minthd 11y ago
I've seen some estimates of costs per package shipment via drone at less than $1, while currently amazon might pay $6 per package.

brianobush 11y ago

24/7/365 seems overly optimistic, weather alone will most likely cut out many of those trips. Depending on the type of collision avoidance technology used may further limit night time operation.

ams6110 11y ago

As drones and other autonomous machine/robots start to replace human employees, I expect to hear calls to tax them to recoup the social externalities. If they are taxed enough, then there is no longer an advantage to using them over human employees. The fallacy in that thinking is left as an exercise for the reader.

eru 11y ago
The externalities might be smaller than the profit. Ie even with all externalities internalized via taxes, it might still beat humans.

minthd 11y ago

I've seen some estimates of costs per package shipment via drone at less than $1, while currently amazon might pay $6 per package.