December 7 was a big day for Amazon (AMZN). It made its very first delivery of a package by drone.
It was in England, it wasn’t far from Amazon’s warehouse, it’s daylight/good weather only, and it’s available to only two customers at the moment. But Amazon says that it will soon expand availability to dozens of UK customers, then hundreds, and then—regulations willing—the world.
Don’t expect to get 30-minute Amazon Prime Air delivery in the US any time soon, though.
Amazon’s ambitions are being thwarted by the FAA, which has yet to approve Amazon’s drone-delivery plans here.
There are plenty of questions about delivering packages by automated drone. How will it work? Will the skies become black with drones? Will they collide with planes? What about apartment dwellers?
So when I reported my story about the current legal status of drones for “CBS Sunday Morning” (you can watch the story here), Amazon, of course, was one of my first stops. In October 2015, I interviewed Paul Misener, Amazon’s vice president for global public policy.
In honor of Prime Air’s first successful package delivery, I thought that maybe it’d be worth re-posting the edited transcript of my interview with Amazon’s Misener.
David Pogue: First of all, tell the unenlightened about Amazon Prime Air.
PM: Well, soon after I joined Amazon in early 2000, my young son was sitting on my lap. And we ordered something from Amazon, and he hopped off and ran up to the front door, waiting for the brown truck to show up on the spot. That was a high-delivery expectation. (LAUGH) I had to explain that just because we’d bought this thing doesn’t mean it’s at the front door yet.
So Prime Air is a future delivery service that will get packages to customers within 30 minutes of them ordering it online at Amazon.com.
The characteristics of these drones that we have set as goals for ourselves are: the range has to be over 10 miles. These things will weigh about 55 pounds each. But importantly, they’ll be able to deliver parcels that weigh up to five pounds. And it turns out that the vast majority of the things we sell at Amazon weigh less than five pounds.
DP: OK, a few questions pop up right away. What if I’m not home?
PM: It gets delivered to your doorstep, or wherever you want in your yard, just as like it would be if it were delivered by the UPS truck.
DP: What about if there’s some guy with a shotgun who sees that I’m getting a TV and wants to shoot it down?
PM: I suppose they could shoot at trucks, too.
We want to make the deliveries. And we believe that these Prime Air drones will be as normal as seeing a delivery truck driving down the street someday. So the novelty will wear off.
DP: Would it help Amazon, not having to pay shipping companies? To have it under your own control?
PM: Well, that’s not the purpose of it. It’s really to fulfill a need that we believe our customers have.
Usually they need that delivery in a few days, and that’s sufficient. But for example, let’s say your grandchildren are visiting you at the end of the month. You want to stock up on batteries. So you go to your computer, your laptop, your tablet or your smartphone, go to the internet, go to Amazon.com, and stock up on batteries. They’ll be delivered a few days later, and that’s fine.
But what if one of your grandchildren is already visiting you, and she’s playing with an electric truck on the floor, and the battery wears out? On one hand, you could get her all bundled up, put her in the car and drive to the store to get the battery replacement, and drive all the way back. Wouldn’t it be so much better if you could just go online from Amazon and order it, have it delivered in 30 minutes?
DP: I mean, sure. But you would understand if people would say, “Are you kidding? That is a huge technological, geological, geographic, regulatory problem to solve!”
Culled from Yahoo News.
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