Wednesday W.O.W - Zipline Instant Delivery Drones 🚁📦
[5min read] Your mid-week bite sized treat on emerging tech and our journey to the Metaverse. Learn about a new drone delivery technology that is changing the future of logistics and delivery.
A nibble of knowledge in your inbox every Wednesday with a simple format:
🇼 What the technology is
🇴 Objective(s) - what is it trying to achieve, with some examples
🇼 Why it is important to users as well as businesses & brands.
Wait, wasn’t Amazon going to do drone deliveries years ago?
Although the promise of rapid drone delivery goes back several years, technical challenges have prevented it from becoming widespread. Recently however the space is heating back up with Wing, a unit of Google parent Alphabet, recently claimed to be able to deliver up to 1,000 packages a day in select areas where it is operating, with ambitions to increase that into the millions over the next 18 months. But they have competition.
Introducing Zipline
Zipline is a company that designs and operates drones for delivering medical supplies, such as blood and vaccines, to remote and hard-to-reach areas. The company was founded in 2014 and is based in California, USA. Zipline has been delivering packages to destinations more than 100 km away since 2016, with the majority of its operations in Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania and Rwanda, where doctors can order medical supplies via text message and dispatch emergency blood deliveries at 100 km per hour.
The company, which is valued at nearly $3 billion, launched emergency operations in the US in 2020 to provide medical supplies to healthcare workers. It also collaborated with Pfizer to deliver Covid-19 vaccines.
What is Zipline Instant Delivery?
Zipline recently announced the launch of a short-route delivery system designed to enable customers in multiple US cities to receive prescriptions, lab tests, or custom-made salads within minutes. Zipline has already partnered with three US hospitals in three states and Sweetgreen, a salad restaurant chain, and a home delivery service provider.
The new delivery service uses the P2 Zip drone, which has 2 main parts. First is an autonomous winged aircraft that has the ability to hover in the sky above its destination. It then lowers by cable the second part, a “droid” which can steer side-to-side with propellers as it comes down, then lands and drops its payload within a 30cm square.
The P2 Zip can travel up to 39 kilometers one way without a payload and up to 16 kilometers while carrying 2.7 to 3.6 kilograms of weight. 🦾
The system is nearly inaudible and much safer (the noisy part spinning parts stay high in the sky) and delivery times will be up to seven times faster than car delivery, claiming 97% fewer emissions.♻️
What are the objectives of the technology?
To be used in urban and city areas to make deliveries fast and with precision, placing packages on small targets like a patio table or the front steps of a home.
Replace drivers delivering Uber Eats, Door Dash, etc which is inefficient and terrible for traffic and the environment.
To allow the flying drones to service deliveries from multiple businesses, picking up their payload from different docks as needed, leveraging the scale of an autonomous network.
Why is it important and what role does it play in the next 5 years?
Zipline's technology is transforming the way small packages move around the world, operating on three continents and in seven countries and has made more than 540,000 deliveries to real customers, completing one delivery every 90 seconds.
The P2 Zip (and the other competitors that will rise) can deliver up to 7x as fast as traditional automobile delivery and by 2028 will likely handle the vast majority of small package deliveries in the food, healthcare, and convenience sectors. Think about what business will be disrupted, what new business models will arise? How will we prevent them from being used for illegal goods ie drugs? 🙅🏻♂️
Safety will be necessary for true adoption. Preflight inspections, redundant systems, and real-time monitoring are just some of the steps that will be needed to enhance the safety of flights and services. All it takes is a few high-profile accidents to dampen public sentiment.
In summary, this is an example of groundbreaking technology that is changing the future of logistics and delivery. By using autonomous electric drones to deliver goods and services quickly, efficiently, and sustainably, we will be able to enjoy even more convenience while reducing the negative environmental impact of traditional delivery methods.
For those that are keen to learn more, here is the 40 min Keynote presentation from less than 2 weeks ago:
If you are interested in one of the (many) consulting services I offer, reach out to me at https://johnsonandhunt.com/reach-out
This would be great for NZ regions rather than all the courier vans driving around. Couriers presumably still required for loading up the drone etc. Fewer cars, less fuel...