Except a lot of deliveries to residential areas happen when nobody is home. So getting a text to go outside and get my package from an automated vehicle won't help me at all. And this is where drones can come in handy. The drone could deliver the package from the truck to my doorstep. Sure, it may not work in urban areas with high rises but it will work just fine in single family house neighborhoods and that's a huge part of the country.

I think this highlights an important idea. The driverless vehicle and drone tech aren't mutually exclusive. You could potentially have a driverless box van that parks on a street corner and has drones pick packages off it and take them to your door.

Without doing any of the math, this actually seems like the right solution. An automated truck that can drive around while a swarm of drones are continuously dropping off packages - basically an aircraft carrier.

I deal with writing software for some shipping and logistics as part of my job.

This is already how a lot of this stuff works.

A manufacturer ships stuff to a DC, which ships stuff to a 3rd party pool provider, which ships stuff to a store, which then ships stuff to the customer (via "regular" mail).

Each step can be thought of as trading throughput for latency. Some manufacturers only ship things to the DC like once every few months (sometimes thousands of containers at a time), the DC to pools once a week (generally in tractor trailers), the pools to stores once a day (in either trailers, or delivery trucks), and the stores to customers multiple times a day (regular mail)

Adding another step on the end of that seems like the most likely "end goal" to me.

Get around the problem of the inefficient "last mile" of delivery by making the delivery truck a drone platform.

Or maybe the drone could drop it off in the back yard instead, or what not?

I think drone delivery makes a lot of sense in remote locations.

What does a drone offer that a human courier doesn't? The cost savings from not having to haul a human meat bag hundreds of miles into the bush to hand deliver a parcel of medicine that could've been air dropped from a drone.

I'd assume that the drone would deliver from a truck to the front door. Combine that with a self-driving truck and you've got substantial cost and time savings:

- more than one drone delivering from the truck at a time

- truck not having to stop on the same street, just within fly distance of destination

- truck can move while drones are in-flight

- etc

I quite like this idea. But, in thinking about it -- why not a specialized ground robot from truck to doorstop? Kind of like the irobot packbot. I could buy the argument that drones are easier because they avoid the terrain hassles.

But for what reason do you need a truck. Why not self-driving "Packages". You need Range? Use self-driving "Batteries". I think range problems will be a thing of the past.

What do you do with the wheels & batteries after the package is delivered?

I don't think drones are going to fully replace anything we have now, but they are going to augment other methods.

The "last mile" is extremely inefficient to do in a delivery truck. Especially so in suburban areas.

Ships, trains, trucks, and even normal cars will probably always be cheaper than a drone in terms of raw price per lb of stuff moved, but there is a big "want" in the market for quick deliveries.

To use an already overused analogy, a truck full of hard drives isn't going to replace your home internet connection any time soon.

Drones are good for extremely fast point-to-point and costs go way down if they're mass-produced. Far, far cheaper than human couriers.

Automated delivery vans are strong competitor but there's a lot more red tape involved with AI vans... drones might fill the gap until vans are on the road. By that point the cost of operating a drone might be so low that they still operate for expedite point-to-point shipping (think Amazon's Prime Now vs Prime Same-day shipping)

I agree. When we have self-driving cars, why would a drone be cheaper then having a self-driving truck drive around and drop stuff off? Also, I don't see a drone bridging the last step to your doorstep. What if it's a large package such as an air conditioner? There's so many odd package shapes and sizes. Why not just a robot picking up the package and walking it to the door? Then you could sign for packages as well.

Drone might be faster (ex: traffic)

The mistake, I think, is to see drone delivery as a competitor to ground shipping. Ground will always be cheaper, and self-driving will only further push down the cost.

What drones offer that no other shipment method can, in addition to rapid, point-to-point travel, is a completely different economy: As an example, it would be prohibitive to send a truck, even a self-driving one, out on a 40-minute drive from a warehouse for a single on-demand delivery. There’s no such overhead for a drone: You don’t have to wait until a bunch of other orders have piled up; the drone can just head out and make the delivery as soon as it’s loaded.

This is obviously overkill for your average Amazon order, but for on-demand services, it’s currently competing with an entire ground vehicle going out for a single delivery. I’d say it’s inevitable that drones will be both cheaper and faster than that.

The thing is, you'd have an autonomous vehicle that could park in an area and use a drone(s) to deliver to your door step. Remember, this doesn't have to apply to everywhere; urban and rural delivery likely makes up the majority of companies like Amazon's B2C delivery.

You make reference to underlying assumptions about the economics of drone delivery, but I don't think you've shown anything.

What is the average cost per UPS delivery, and what would the cost be with a drone?

Assume a drone has an avg 1 year lifespan, can make 20 deliveries a day, costs $9k, and $1k in annual power and maintenance. Thats $1.40 per delivery.

If a UPS driver + truck cost $100k / year and can do 200 deliveries a day, that's also $1.40 per delivery.

I have no idea about the accuracy of my numbers above, but neither seems out of the realm of possibility. I can definitely see drones being economical.

The mistake you make here is thinking that drones are dominated by existing shipping methods.

They're not -- while they're currently more expensive than existing shipping methods, those costs will drop.

Furthermore, drone delivery is going to be much faster than any method of delivery. And what's really the difference between a self-driving bike vs a self-driving small-air-vehicle? One is going to be easier to implement.

There's no doubt for me that drone delivery will happen. It probably won't make sense for all packages in NYC, but it will make sense in smaller towns and for out-of-town deliveries.

Drones will provide speed, reliability, and at some point cost over the alternative. [Remember, they can be charged in an arbitrary location, so their electrical bill will be the cheapest place in their flight range]