Amazon Prime Air

The technology is interesting, for sure, but the commercial is great.

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I guess now Amazon has Top Gear that they get Jeremy Clarkson on the cheap for ads too.

The tech is cool, and I’m as much of a futurist as anyone, but the economics of personal air delivery via drone just seems so out of whack.

If air drone problems are all solved (weather, kids with bb guns, places to land, the FAA etc) then won’t also self-driving electric vans be here before or at the same time? An autonomous van could also carry more than one parcel and act like a moving community mailbox (it pulls up outside your house, you type a code into a mailbox door, it drives off), so if you were ok with waiting for it for 40 minutes rather than 30 then it could also be multipliers like more efficient. Having one delivery per one aircraft seems so odd.

I guess I can just see automated self-driving vans/cars happening in limited circumstances around existing distribution centres (certain cities like Seattle first, where they already do 1 hour delivery with drivers etc) before air drone deliveries happen, and if that’s the case then maybe Amazon could just use those.

Land freight automation via automated trucks is probably going to be a huge disrupting technology over the next few years. Look at any highway at 3AM and now imagine the better margins if all those trucks don’t need drivers or rest stops. Those freight businesses are all about margins, so it’s a great motivator to push this to happen sooner than later.