Why Jeff Bezos's Drone Is More Than a Joke

Because the best place to compete with huge established logistics chains is in places with well-developed road & rail infrastructure?

> ridiculous comparison (drone faster than a truck?)

Familiar with the term "As the crow flies"? And even the slowest drone is faster than the truck that's stuck in mud / can't pass the washed-out bridge / broke an axle in a pothole.

> And if the roads are washed out due to rain, how are you going to charge the batteries in remote locations? certainly not with solar power!

Stockpile them when conditions suit? Higher capacity fixed-site batteries recharged under better conditions? Wind?

Scale the charging stations? If this article[1] is accurate, India is looking to upgrade >50% of its cell-phone towers (1-5kWe) over the next few years. No doubt others will be looking to do likewise, especially if they're currently paying for diesel + transport. Modular/turnkey installations of that size should become much more common/affordable.

> * You can move 24kg per day autonomously*

Which might be plenty if all you need are those few rather important vials of anti-venom and the roads are impassable (but you're not rich enough to actually afford a medivac).

Whine whine whine.

[1] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=cellular-to...

So is DHL (german link): http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/DHL-will-in-Bonn-Pake...

Admittedly, thats still in the prototype phase.

http://qz.com/152788/australia-and-china-are-way-ahead-of-am...

-Leverage in dealing with other forms of last mile delivery when it comes to negotiating costs and contracts.

-Kickstarting the necessary legislative framework which will likely take many years to finalize.

-Goading other sectors of industry to start developing and testing the tech needed. Remember, Amz, is not shy about simply buying up companies to acquire technology it needs.

Counter-example: Internet Bubble 1.0

To borrow a quote that seems pertinent:

We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten -- Bill Gates

Sometimes things sneak up amazingly quickly when no one is expecting them, or actively dismissing them.

Sometimes things that we expect to happen don't, or take a lot longer to happen that anyone thought, or just turn out not to be worthwhile by the time they do happen.

Maybe drones will be delivering packages in a year, maybe they will end up like flying cars; something with huge potential that exists only as a novelty in the present.

It depends on the technology and the progress.

If you look at a history of technological progress, there's a very strong case to be made for it having peaked in the period 1880 - 1930 or thereabouts. At the beginning of this period, electric lighting, automobiles, airplanes, radio, refrigeration, indoor plumbing (outside very few exceptions), central heating (indoor plumbing is far more tenable when your mains and sewage pipes don't burst from freezing), steelmaking, widespread photography, cinema, and the beginnings of petrochemistry and pharmaceuticals.

The 1930s-1950s saw petrochemicals, synthetic fibers, plastics, and pharmaceuticals. Radio, television, and microwaves. Solid-state electronics and computers. Aircraft and air transport.

Since 1975 has been a rather different climate. The period from 1933 to 1973 saw huge social and technological tranformations, enough that a person transported from one to the other would need significant acclimatization. From 1973 to the present there've been some changes in hairstyles and clothing, cars have gotten smaller and generally more efficient, airplane tickets cheaper (thanks largely to deregulation) but flights slower, and some technologies first pioneered in the late 1960s (WIMP computer interfaces, Unix, ARPANET (now the Internet), TCP/IP, and microprocessors), have become vastly cheaper and more powerful. _What you can do_ with the technologies hasn't changed so much as who can afford to do them (damned near everybody).

Robert Ayres, "Technological Transformations and Log Waves" describes much of this (in particular it lays out five technological transformations).

http://webarchive.iiasa.ac.at/Admin/PUB/Documents/RR-89-001....

I've discussed this at more length on G+:

https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/6sJbXhwj...

What we've seen since the 1960s has been largely confined to increases in computational power and some consequent results of that. In particular, better management of manufacturing and design processes, but all aspects which trace back to Moore's Law. Randall Lee Reetz on G+ frequently iterates over this theme (he's irrascable but technically very solid):

https://plus.google.com/+RandallLeeReetz/posts

In particular, there's a great deal which was predicted or projected starting in the 1950s which hasn't materialized, most of which are hard problems of integration or massive resource utilization. We don't have colonies on the Moon, artificial-gravity space stations (the one assemblage of pressurized cans we do have is the most expensive single structure ever created by humans), orbiting power stations, flying cars, jetpacks, world peace, freedom from hunger, equitable wealth and income distribution (or even educational opportunity), or even highly reliable, privacy-respecting, integrated home management systems. Systems integration is a huge part of any techie's job description, and it's hard.

Regards the specific case of high-speed arial package delivery, outside a limited range and weight limit, I doubt this will be very widespread. Air freight exists, but it's limited to a minuscule fraction of all freight delivery. The EU saw 14.5 million tonnes of air freight in 2011. That compares with 3.6 billion tonnes of sea freight. Road/rail aren't clearly indicated below but are also substantial.

http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index....

For the US, air freight is 0.1% of total weight, 0.3% of ton meils, but 7.4% of value (high-value and time-sensitive goods tend to move by air).

http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/programs/freight_transportation/...

Truck value is 63.7%, weight is 58.2%, and ton-miles is 32.1% (shorter-haul, moderate-value goods). http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/programs/freight_transportation/...

Rail is 3.7% of value, 12.0% of weight, and 27.8% of ton-miles (largely low-value bulk goods). http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/programs/freight_transportation/...

Water is 8.3% of value, 14.8% of weight, and 15.3% of ton-miles (domestic). It's over 75% of all international freight by weight.