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Amazon Prime Air

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Re: Amazon Prime Air

#171

Post by toyg »

crusso wrote: post #150
toyg wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just another option to add to the mix. Not everyone chooses next-day delivery, not everyone will choose 30-min delivery; the classic delivery infrastructure will likely remain in place. The service will just periodically be disabled: "due to severe weather in your area, PrimeAir is currently not available. Please check back later, or choose standard delivery."

It's still a question of capacity. Any drone deliveries that need to be made will take away from other delivery capacity. Given that standard vehicle delivery will be much more time consuming and much less parallelized than the drone delivery, drone outages will place a thrashing level of load on standard delivery unless a great deal of unutilized standard delivery capacity is kept idle most of the time. That costs m…

That's more of a question for FedEx and UPS. Of course existing contracts with Amazon will require tweaking, but I don't see how drone-outage periods will be much different from other volume spikes.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#174

Post by aeturnum »

RuggeroAltair wrote: post #120

I think that a lot of comments here are missing a crucial point: in the next few years unmanned vehicles are going to play a major role in most of the transportation landscape, whereas this is for people or objects. Amazon here is trying to play the same role that Google has been playing for a long time with their self driving cars. They are setting a standard and pushing for regulations and laws. It is not that diff…

I disagree that they're making the same play as Google. Google has never claimed they're going to make a self-driving car, or offer it as a service. As far as I can tell with a few minutes of googling, they don't even have a home page for the project. It's a research project and a tool to "push" the law in the direction Google wants.

Amazon, on the other hand, is 100% offering a product. It has a name, and they indicate a plan to, "enter commercial operations as soon as the necessary regulations are in place." This is partially about getting into the game early, but it's also focused on a product in a way that Google's car isn't.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#175

Post by rch »

jaggederest wrote: post #146
rch wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, $165 isn't bad for a cashmere sweater (though to be honest I don't know anything about the quality of the stuff on this site). I took note because I don't know of a custom shirt place in Boulder, and I miss the 3 or 4 that were near my place in Houston. I hear professional women really appreciate having nice custom shirts as well.

I'm just saying, if you look at off the rack dress shirts they'll be $30-$60, similarly with most of the other items. Sure, it might be better quality, and it'll certainly fit better, but I can't afford $1600 for ten shirts. $400 sounds a lot better, and I'm not jumping up to run and get that deal either.

That's fair I suppose. I won't argue in favor of spending more just for the privilege of doing so. But A quick look at Banana Republic puts the rack price in the $60 to $125 range, and I'd hope there is a noticeable quality difference between 'fancy gap' and tailored clothing.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#176

Post by jmduke »

(Disclaimer: I work for Amazon, but not for anything related to this. This is the first time I'm learning of Prime Air.)

I'm somewhat disheartened by the skepticism of a lot of comments from HN, Reddit, and Twitter. Not stuff like "I wonder how they'll handle adverse weather" (which I think is intellectually interesting) but stuff like "As soon as one of these kills a dog it's done for". What merit is there in rooting for failure for failure's sake? This feels like science fiction in the best way possible.

I have no idea whether or not this will work, but I sure hope it does. It's incredibly exciting.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#177

Post by vkatluri »

I guess we are getting closer and closer to the Pizza delivery technologies described in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. Entire industries dedicated to getting things into consumer's hands faster and faster. The "now" in "I want it now" keeps getting shorter and shorter.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#178

Post by dakrisht »

kyro wrote: post #152

This concept and forward thinking is of the type I make a conscious effort to protect from skepticism and naysayers. Aside from any obvious or glaring safety issues, ideas like this one, that teeter on the reality-joke line, are the exact ones that bring about true disruption. And that's why I encourage everyone around me to keep an open and forgiving mind, like you would with a child. Will Amazon Prime Air work? I d…

Well said. It's original thinking like this that moves us forward as a human race. And in order to move forward, you have to take huge risks, face uncertainty and do whatever you can to prove everyone wrong.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#179

Post by crusso »

kyro wrote: post #152

This concept and forward thinking is of the type I make a conscious effort to protect from skepticism and naysayers. Aside from any obvious or glaring safety issues, ideas like this one, that teeter on the reality-joke line, are the exact ones that bring about true disruption. And that's why I encourage everyone around me to keep an open and forgiving mind, like you would with a child. Will Amazon Prime Air work? I d…

like you would with a child

Why would we turn off our critical thinking skills when contemplating claims of a leap in technology that transcends what many of us understand to be possible currently?

There are times to encourage creative thought, like with children or within the context of a brainstorming meeting.

But most of the time we should evaluate claims critically with the best practices of the Scientific Method.

IMO, there's way too much gullibility in our society for religions, junk science, Internet scams, and political dogma.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#180

Post by scoot »

sbierwagen wrote: post #163
scoot wrote: post #124

http://www.amazon.com/primeair When will I be able to choose Prime Air as a delivery option? A: We hope the FAA's rules will be in place as early as sometime in 2015. We will be ready at that time. Sorry, but not a chance. I'm intimately familiar with the flight controller, motor and batter technology behind multi-rotors, and I can state unequivocally that this is just not ready for 'prime'-time (so-to-speak :) There…

Battery recharge time - out for 15 mins flight? Recharge for 2 hours. Short trips to/from a fixed distribution point is the canonical use case for battery swapping in electric vehicles.

It is, but keep in mind that for weight efficiency the LiPo batteries are only protected by a heat-shrink skin, no physical or fire protection at all. They will spontaneously combust quite robustly in a crash, or during charging of they are faulty or have been stressed in flight.

So they have to be charged in a fire safe manner, and (in a commercial setting such as a distribution centre) away from the main facility. Not beyond possibility, and again with changes in battery technology this will improve (LiFo is looking hopeful relative to LiPoon the safety front), but another logistical hurdle, so still worth mentioning.

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