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AmazonFresh Has Launched in Bay Area

blogs.sfweekly.com

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Re: AmazonFresh Has Launched in Bay Area

#61

Post by rthomas6 »

rogerbinns wrote: post #37
saosebastiao wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the main reason I roll my eyes whenever people say self-driving cars are the future of product delivery. After hundreds of years of history in mass delivery systems, we still haven't figured out how to interact with customers at a human level...no way in hell a robot is going to be better at it any time soon.

Think harder! The vehicle only has to arrive when you are actually there to pick up whatever it has. Robot drivers don't get tired, need bathroom breaks or get impatient. You can share your location if on your way home so it can meet you exactly as you arrive. The vehicle can then have lockboxes. You enter a code and it opens up letting you access your stuff. (Or you use your phone or whatever.)

How could that compete with a UPS driver that drops the boxes off and goes to the next place? People don't all arrive home at different times, so a vehicle cannot choose to show up at any place at any time. While the vehicle is waiting for someone else to arrive, they could have already delivered to many more places. Even without paying a driver and a larger number of vehicles, the efficiency of delivery seems lower and the cost higher.

Re: AmazonFresh Has Launched in Bay Area

#66

Post by noise »

mlyang wrote: post #13

Interesting to see a new spin on this. Webvan was one of the biggest busts of the dot com era ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webvan ) -- interesting that Amazon resurrected it..

Webvan was the best thing born of the 1st dotcom era, sadly it was unsustainable. Their timing was perfect for me - I was car-less in SF with kids and the local grocery store had recently gone under leaving me with a bus trip in order to grocery shop. Delivery to my 3rd floor walkup was awfully nice in comparison and well worth the approx. 10% markup. They had really nice crates too, I have 3 that I still use for various things.

Re: AmazonFresh Has Launched in Bay Area

#67

Post by saosebastiao »

rogerbinns wrote: post #37
saosebastiao wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the main reason I roll my eyes whenever people say self-driving cars are the future of product delivery. After hundreds of years of history in mass delivery systems, we still haven't figured out how to interact with customers at a human level...no way in hell a robot is going to be better at it any time soon.

Think harder! The vehicle only has to arrive when you are actually there to pick up whatever it has. Robot drivers don't get tired, need bathroom breaks or get impatient. You can share your location if on your way home so it can meet you exactly as you arrive. The vehicle can then have lockboxes. You enter a code and it opens up letting you access your stuff. (Or you use your phone or whatever.)

Ahh but now you violate the cost assumptions of sequntially optimized delivery routes, exploding your fuel costs...a phenomenally bad idea. Tell me, are your delivery vehicles 10x more fuel efficient than a UPS van? Because that is the minimum range of efficiency that you'll have to acheive to make your plan viable, let alone cost effective. I'm not exaggerating either... you just added an entirely new dimension (delivery windows) to an already NP-hard Traveling Salesman problem. I wouldn't be surprised to hit a 100x increase in fuel costs for a pure scheduled delivery.

Re: AmazonFresh Has Launched in Bay Area

#68

Post by discodave »

Aaronontheweb wrote: post #26
wehadfun wrote: post #25

What we need is another kind of mail box. A "AmazonBox", but takes deliveries from other companies as well. Big, refrigerated, with a public/private key.

Amazon does have Amazon Lockers - the 7/11 down the street from me has them. http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=...

Yes but going down to the 7/11 to pick up your groceries defeats the point of delivering groceries. People need lockers at their house or at the very least the nearest street corner.

Re: AmazonFresh Has Launched in Bay Area

#69

Post by rogerbinns »

saosebastiao wrote: post #67
rogerbinns wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think harder! The vehicle only has to arrive when you are actually there to pick up whatever it has. Robot drivers don't get tired, need bathroom breaks or get impatient. You can share your location if on your way home so it can meet you exactly as you arrive. The vehicle can then have lockboxes. You enter a code and it opens up letting you access your stuff. (Or you use your phone or whatever.)

Ahh but now you violate the cost assumptions of sequntially optimized delivery routes, exploding your fuel costs...a phenomenally bad idea. Tell me, are your delivery vehicles 10x more fuel efficient than a UPS van? Because that is the minimum range of efficiency that you'll have to acheive to make your plan viable, let alone cost effective. I'm not exaggerating either... you just added an entirely new dimension (del…

A UPS van sitting somewhere waiting is expensive because of the human inside. A driverless one costs nothing (except some refrigeration if applicable). Additionally residential have lower fuel costs for electric vehicles. It doesn't matter if the driverless vehicle takes 4 hours to deliver to an area when a UPS guy could have done it in an hour.

Note that UPS costs come from having the human. They need larger vehicles to absorb that cost, and then have to get the most bang for the buck in the time used. Driverless deliver can use different sized vehicles and time is far less important.

Re: AmazonFresh Has Launched in Bay Area

#70

Post by rogerbinns »

rthomas6 wrote: post #61
rogerbinns wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think harder! The vehicle only has to arrive when you are actually there to pick up whatever it has. Robot drivers don't get tired, need bathroom breaks or get impatient. You can share your location if on your way home so it can meet you exactly as you arrive. The vehicle can then have lockboxes. You enter a code and it opens up letting you access your stuff. (Or you use your phone or whatever.)

How could that compete with a UPS driver that drops the boxes off and goes to the next place? People don't all arrive home at different times, so a vehicle cannot choose to show up at any place at any time. While the vehicle is waiting for someone else to arrive, they could have already delivered to many more places. Even without paying a driver and a larger number of vehicles, the efficiency of delivery seems lower…

A UPS driver is time constrained hence a vehicle sized because of their costs and routing to make best use of their time. Neither constraint exists for driverless vehicles.

I suspect the solutions that do get deployed will be something like a larger vehicle in the delivery area acting as a distribution point, and smaller ones making the deliveries from there.

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