[HN Gopher] Wing and Walmart are bringing drone delivery to 100 ...
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       Wing and Walmart are bringing drone delivery to 100 new stores
        
       Author : gmays
       Score  : 9 points
       Date   : 2025-06-13 20:46 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
        
       | coldcode wrote:
       | How does drone delivery make any financial sense at all? It seems
       | riskier nad less likely to work, given that people's homes (not
       | to mention apartments) may not have any reasonable or safe
       | delivery spots.
        
         | jarbus wrote:
         | I would imagine that this makes sense for a large subset of
         | deliveries, if 30-50% of deliveries can be done with drones,
         | not only will it still be worth it, but I imagine those
         | customers will likely buy more from the store, especially if
         | they can make it same-day delivery
        
         | Teever wrote:
         | It may not make financial sense right now but these companies
         | are willing to subsidize it on the expectation that it will one
         | day make sense.
         | 
         | Someone needs to do the R&D work first and then roll out real
         | world implementations to iron out the bugs.
        
         | xnx wrote:
         | Delivery is so much faster when you can fly point to point and
         | don't have to contend with any traffic or traffic control (stop
         | light, stop signs, etc.).
         | 
         | It's more of a surprise that delivering a hamburger in a ton of
         | metal and plastic with a human driver makes financial sense.
        
         | ortusdux wrote:
         | I like proposed drone in the delivery truck ceiling idea.
         | Adding even 20 deliveries a route would pay dividends pretty
         | quickly. I'm concerned about the risk that I might end up with
         | a Walmart/Amazon flight corridor over my house. Last-half-mile
         | deliveries from vans would have a much lower impact.
        
           | burnt-resistor wrote:
           | Ukraine cargo container style. Do 40 deliveries at once in an
           | area.
        
       | londons_explore wrote:
       | Why hasn't this taken 90% of the postal and delivery market?
       | 
       | Why aren't USPS/Amazon selling all their trucks and replacing
       | them with drones?
        
         | cma wrote:
         | I still want to know why we aren't heavily taxing junk mail
         | instead of subsidizing. Or adding a national opt-out system. I
         | do see the incentive problem for political junk mail, asking
         | incumbents to vote against subsidizing that would be hard.
        
         | out-of-ideas wrote:
         | i for one dont want some noisy ass mosquito camera recording
         | pos flying around me that frequently. noise and light pollution
         | are frustrating; though i can see where populated areas are
         | already trained where that pollution is normal, adding a bit
         | more is tolerable (edit: not that i want to be subject to that)
         | 
         | i would also be okay with the peoples jobs being replaced by
         | the robots offered early retirement, paid fully by these big
         | corps.. but of course that means the big corps would charge the
         | rest of us more money over the longrun so that cost would not
         | hurt their bottom line
        
           | rufus_foreman wrote:
           | Delivery trucks are louder than drones.
        
             | out-of-ideas wrote:
             | but they are not directly over my house, they go on the
             | allocated roads on a schedule... but taking it to the gig-
             | services, yes they could be more frequent and louder. the
             | thing with sounds pollution is i dont hear the street-
             | traffic on one side of my house. if its overhead theres no
             | escape (edit: coupled, like i said, with all the
             | information gathering those drones will be equipped with)
        
               | bryanlarsen wrote:
               | If you live in a typical suburban house a delivery truck
               | might be a couple dozen feet away whereas a delivery
               | drone is going to be a couple hundred feet above you.
        
             | burnt-resistor wrote:
             | ICE-powered trucks are louder than drones able to carry
             | small packages. But carrying heavy packages will require
             | extremely large and loud drones. All drones though are
             | louder than EV trucks.
        
             | gazook89 wrote:
             | A delivery truck carries many packages, and delivers them
             | along a route. A drone carries one package. In my
             | neighborhood, that could be a drone every few minutes
             | flying overhead.
             | 
             | Electric delivery trucks are also much quieter than a
             | drone.
             | 
             | And, as another commenter suggested, heavy packages will
             | still be done by truck. So we'll have trucks AND drones.
        
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       (page generated 2025-06-13 23:01 UTC)