Drone delivery of packages is just on the horizon in Amazon’s eyes, and the company posted a YouTube advertisement with Jeremy Clarkson earlier today to prepare us all for the new Amazon Prime Air delivery service.
The video is a bit too long for my taste, but it gives Clarkson the time to explain the entire drone process to us. After customers order packages and workers retrieve the products for flight, the drones will rise to nearly 400 feet in order to travel to the products’ destinations.
The drones will have a “hybrid design” with the ability to switch between horizontal and vertical flight, and Amazon promises packages delivered in 30 minutes or less (this sounds a whole lot like a pizza order, which I would imagine to be far less complicated). The new delivery drones also include sensor-avoiding technology in order to keep from running into things—on both the ground and in the air.
Perhaps the most odd part of the video is when Clarkson tells us all that the drones can fly for up to 15 miles. Only 15 miles? That doesn’t sound like it gives much delivery range to folks out in the boonies.
Either way, it’s a unique take on delivery that comes at a time when Volvo introduced a new system to deliver packages straight to customer vehicles. Amazon hasn’t announced when the service will launch, but the website claims that the start date won’t be until the company has “the regulatory support needed to safely realize [its] vision.”
Contact the author at alanis.king@jalopnik.com.