Should Amazon and Walmart Give Up on Drone Delivery?

In a recent opinion piece for Bloomberg News, journalist Leticia Miranda writes that both Walmart and Amazon should give up on drone delivery.

But at the same time, other journalists have hailed 2024 as the year that drone delivery will go mainstream.

Credit: DroneUp

So who’s right?

The answer is, as with many things as nuanced and complex as drone delivery: Well, it’s complicated.

The Reasons Big Retailers Should Drop Drone Delivery

Miranda makes a strong argument against drone delivery.

In her piece, she lists five reasons why drone delivery won’t ever work for big retail companies like Walmart and Amazon:

1. Package Size and Fragility Limitations

Retail delivery drones can’t carry big packages. Amazon’s can only carry up to five pounds. And Wing’s drones have the same weight threshold of five pounds, and that’s for their new, bigger delivery drone.

Also, because deliveries are made by “dropping” packages down on a wire, the packages can’t be too fragile. (We’ve never heard this before—our understanding is that the wire-dropping method can be precise and gentle enough to handle most ordinary objects within the weight restriction.)

Credit: DroneUp

2. Dependence on Weather and Other Obstructions

Drones can’t fly in bad weather. Plus, they have to deal with all the obstructions that come with congested city and suburban life.

As Miranda writes, “in general, [drones] can be hamstrung by bad weather or cars, trees and other things obstructing their safe deliveries.”

3. Noise

Drones are loud, and people aren’t going to be happy about having even more noise in their lives.

On that point, a study from 2021 found that the sound of drones is “substantially more annoying than road traffic or aircraft noise due to special acoustic characteristics such as pure tones and high-frequency broadband noise.”

4. Legal Barriers

A big legal barrier to drone delivery becoming scalable and inexpensive is the limitation of having only one pilot per drone, which is driven largely by BVLOS (Beyond Visual Line of Sight) prohibitions.

Another barrier is the legal question of who owns the airspace over private properties.

That is, do retail companies have the right to fly over people’s homes to make a delivery? Or do individuals have avigation rights to charge for the use of that airspace? While it’s true that the FAA oversees all issues pertaining to the national airspace, it’s also true that there is some argument to be made for property owners charging to provide “air easements” for the right to fly over their land.

5. High Cost

The last one is probably the biggest, because if you can’t make drone delivery cost effective then there’s really no point in doing it.

According to a study done last year by McKinsey, a single-package delivery made by drone costs $13.50—more than a delivery made by an electric- or gas-powered ground vehicle. According to Miranda’s reporting, drone delivery would need to be brought down to just $1.50-$2 per delivery to be viable from a cost perspective.

So Should Walmart and Amazon Give Up?

We don’t think so. But we’ll admit up front—we’re prejudiced.

We’ve seen drone delivery develop over the last several years from a fanciful notion into a viable service.

Back in 2016, we saw drone delivery companies like the now-defunct Flirtey issuing press releases for doing a stunt like delivering a box of donuts. And even three or four years ago, we would have quickly agreed with Miranda.

But today these companies announce real advancements, like the opening of new delivery networks or major developments in the technology they’re using.

So what about all of Miranda’s points?

The truth is that drone delivery companies—not retailers, but companies devoted to doing deliveries—are aware of every obstacle she lists, and have already produced sound solutions to them.

Let’s go point to point.

1. Package Size and Fragility Limitations

First, there are already delivery drones that can carry a lot more than five pounds. DJI’s new FlyCart 30 can carry 66 pounds and A2Z Drones’ Pelican can carry about 18 pounds.

The FlyCart 30 | Credit: DJI

Which is to say that, if companies like Wing or Amazon want to increase the carrying capacity of their drones, they can certainly do so. The five pound capacity is most likely driven by consumer demand and the types of deliveries that make sense for drones to do, not by inherent limitations in the technology.

As for fragility and concerns about “dropping” the package, these don’t seem to stand up to scrutiny. As we noted above, using a line to lower a package has proven to be reliable and fairly gentle.

But let’s say it wasn’t, for the sake of argument. Zipline has already developed a “last mile” solution that uses a ground-based robot called the P2 Zip to keep packages safe while being lowered and bring them precisely to their destination.

Here’s how it works:

2. Dependence on Weather and Other Obstructions

Wing already has delivery drones that can fly in the rain:

But what about other obstructions, like trees or a neighbor’s dog? Wing has also been developing a decentralized delivery model, which relies on autoloader stations at the source of the delivery.

The autoloader stations deal with obstructions on the packing side of the delivery. And on the destination side, tech like Ziplines P2 Zip and the drop-down mechanism have proved to work quite well to place a package where it’s supposed to go.

3. Noise

Noise is definitely a big concern. But Zipline has been working on this, too.

Zipline’s drones are supposedly so quiet they “sound like wind rustling leaves.” Whether or not that’s true, they also fly at 300 feet and hover at that altitude to make their deliveries, remaining at a height that will reduce noise concerns.

4. Legal Barriers

This may be the biggest concern of all for drone deliveries.

But the FAA is working hard to free up BVLOS operations. Drone delivery company UPS Flight Forward was approved last year to fly using ground-based surveillance rather than live safety observers. And the Part 135 certificate that companies like Wing, Zipline, and Amazon have hypothetically allows them to fly BVLOS for package deliveries (depending on the type they have).

UPS Flight Forward

At the same time, technology to support autonomous, remotely-piloted drone operations has been developing rapidly, and that includes flying multiple drones at once.

DFR programs already use remote piloting to send drones to the scene of emergency calls. And Zipline already has the technology to make completely autonomous deliveries.

And steady progress continues to be made both on the technology and regulatory side, making it quite possible that we’ll see autonomous drone delivery enabled within the next few years, with a single pilot located at a command station overseeing multiple delivery drones in transit.

5. High Cost

The current high cost of drone delivery is largely determined by the amount of labor the effort requires, since having spotters on the ground and a single pilot devoted to each delivery is expensive.

But as autonomy develops and is enabled by the FAA, costs will go down.

Costs will also go down as infrastructure develops. When you consider If Wing’s ambitious vision of having autoloader stations in every grocery store or restaurant, the initial cost will be significant but the end result will be a system made to enable drone delivery—and costs will ultimately be lower once that system exists.

So When Will Drone Delivery Come to Me?

It could be a really long time, if ever. Because, despite all the optimism expressed above, there are still a lot of kinks to be worked out.

And, to be clear, we’re not saying that Amazon and Walmart will succeed. Amazon’s drone delivery program has been notoriously plagued by setbacks, and Walmart may ultimately find cheaper ways to do deliveries.

But what we’re saying is that drone delivery itself is here to stay. And that companies like Zipline and Wing, as well as DroneUp and Flytrex, are pushing drone delivery forward, and will continue to do so.