UPS cost != UPS price
Also, not taking into account cost of roads that UPS doesn't pay, nor the fact that flights are much more flexible compared to building roads
The Economics of Drone Delivery
21–30 of 48 posts
Re: The Economics of Drone Delivery
#22UPS cost != UPS price Also, not taking into account cost of roads that UPS doesn't pay, nor the fact that flights are much more flexible compared to building roads
UPS pays for roads. They pay income tax generally, and they pay road use tax on all their vehicles, and they pay for fuel which also has road tax.
Re: The Economics of Drone Delivery
#23I'ld add that drone delivery for takeout would be a nice win, given that most restaurants that deliver are already limited to nearby locations and speed is desired. With a proviso that it might be easier in a suburban situation to begin (given a lawn to drop off the goods).
The thing is that quick, low-price takeout delivery to a limited radius of households is pretty much a solved problem. I suppose one could imagine more industrialized takeout-only restaurants in suburban locations but, again,one could create such a chain today and indeed we have them for say pizza. They're not very good but they're big businesses.
If you could solve the problem of needing to directly interact with the customer to collect payment, I'd think food delivery would love the idea of drones. The biggest cost of a pizza delivery shop is paying the drivers. They normally get an hourly wage, plus mileage if they are using their own cars.
They'd need to solve payment collection; a lot of people still pay cash for things like food delivery.
Re: The Economics of Drone Delivery
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Per pound of cargo I'm sure the delivery truck is way more energy efficient if it's relatively full.
Per pound per mile, I'm sure it is. But most packages get driven way farther than they need to be, since one truck is out all day dropping off packages. Per pound per delivery, I'd bet the truck loses.
That's a good point, and a lot harder to estimate since there are probably a wide variety of routes that a package might take.
Re: The Economics of Drone Delivery
#25Organ delivery might be a good place to test initial drone delivery. It's very high value with very few, well-defined pick-up and delivery points.
Re: The Economics of Drone Delivery
#26I wonder how energy costs would factor into these economics. A couple of thoughts off the top of my head: * drones run on electricity - they are less energy efficient than ground vehicles, but this can be offset by cheapness of electricity - particularly in areas where battery recharge could be done by solar or wind. * The large banks of batteries required to make the drones economically efficient (I imagine it would…
An airplane is far more efficient than a helicopter (drone). Also, I can't imagine that a drone flying the last mile is going to be less energy efficient than driving that big heavy delivery truck.
An airplane has a better chance of gliding out of harms way as well whereas a helicopter jut drops.
Re: The Economics of Drone Delivery
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing is that quick, low-price takeout delivery to a limited radius of households is pretty much a solved problem. I suppose one could imagine more industrialized takeout-only restaurants in suburban locations but, again,one could create such a chain today and indeed we have them for say pizza. They're not very good but they're big businesses.
If you could solve the problem of needing to directly interact with the customer to collect payment, I'd think food delivery would love the idea of drones. The biggest cost of a pizza delivery shop is paying the drivers. They normally get an hourly wage, plus mileage if they are using their own cars. They'd need to solve payment collection; a lot of people still pay cash for things like food delivery.
I don't use any of them because I don't live in an urban area, but my understanding is that apps like GrubHub can handle the payment process.
Re: The Economics of Drone Delivery
#28Strange that an article with this title that talks so much about Amazon's drone efforts doesn't examine Amazon's relationship with the delivery industry. Amazon desperately wants to economically remove the time lag between buying something from Amazon and buying from the nearest Wal-Mart. Drones have the potential of significantly improving delivery times and costs in the long run, but the delivery industry has littl…
Whether or not drone delivery becomes a mainstream part of the equation--I suspect it won't but that's beside the point--it's certainly in Amazon's interests to research and encourage innovation in the logistics business. Mind you, there's already a lot of innovation happening in supply chain systems but economical 1 hr to 1 day consumer delivery hasn't had any real breakthroughs.
Now that may be because people aren't willing to shoulder the cost for most mainstream use cases. But in that case, it's worth experimenting to see if costs can be driven down or use cases can be expanded in various ways.
Re: The Economics of Drone Delivery
#29Thinking a little further. In the future, we will have autonomous cars, and a user will probably not "own" the car, but will simply order it. And the user can specify if (s)he would like to share their ride. This car can easily have additional functions, for example package-delivery (a package is nothing more than a shared ride with a non-human passenger). Of course the logistics will be run from a central computer s…
Yes, and package delivery autonomous car can be made very small -- just big enough to carry the package. In fact, a ground-based autonomous delivery vehicle doesn't have to look anything like a car. Imaging an autonomous Segway-like 2-wheel cart. Segway is 4.5 times more efficient that Toyota Prius and 11 times more efficient than average American passenger vehicle.[1] Something like that would allow delivering packages very cheaply.
[1] http://www.segway.com/downloads/pdfs/energy_efficient_segway...
Re: The Economics of Drone Delivery
#30Thinking a little further. In the future, we will have autonomous cars, and a user will probably not "own" the car, but will simply order it. And the user can specify if (s)he would like to share their ride. This car can easily have additional functions, for example package-delivery (a package is nothing more than a shared ride with a non-human passenger). Of course the logistics will be run from a central computer s…
Yes, and package delivery autonomous car can be made very small -- just big enough to carry the package. In fact, a ground-based autonomous delivery vehicle doesn't have to look anything like a car. Imaging an autonomous Segway-like 2-wheel cart. Segway is 4.5 times more efficient that Toyota Prius and 11 times more efficient than average American passenger vehicle.[1] Something like that would allow delivering packa…
If everything is really well orchestrated logistically, your Segway solution could attach (piggyback) to a bigger autonomous vehicle for a certain duration for greater efficiency, higher speed and bigger radius. Of course, the fuel costs will have to be split, but that is just a matter of making smart accounting software.