Amazon's Drones Will Soon Deliver to Nearly 500 US Cities and Towns (theverge.com)
- Reference: 0185056314
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/08/19/1950233/amazons-drones-will-soon-deliver-to-nearly-500-us-cities-and-towns
- Source link: https://www.theverge.com/tech/981908/amazon-prime-air-drone-delivery-us-expansion
> These will join 11 locations across the US where Amazon already offers drone deliveries, with each Prime Air site serving an area of approximately 175 square miles. The service aims to quickly deliver packages of up to 5 pounds or less [...]. Amazon reiterated its drone safety features alongside these expansion plans, including Prime Air's "industry-leading Detect-and-Avoid system." That's likely an attempt to minimize any concerns raised by the communities where the service is expanding, given these drones have already been scrutinized for crashing into cranes, internet cables, gardens, and an apartment building.
[1] https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/transportation/amazon-prime-air-drone-delivery-expansion
[2] https://www.theverge.com/tech/981908/amazon-prime-air-drone-delivery-us-expansion
Amazon Announces Partnership with Law Enforcement (Score:1)
If you build it, they will come...
Who asked for this? (Score:1)
Weâ(TM)re going to have a brand new source of aggressive noise pollution and another danger you have to watch out for while walking around. It wonâ(TM)t stop with Amazon drones, either. Police drone use will increase and, almost certainly, so will use by other bad actors, corporate or otherwise. Any government that has the power to stop this needs to be pressured to do so. It shouldnâ(TM)t become normalized.
cnbc also reporting (Score:3)
the same but what caught my eye was "will make 1 million drone deliveries this year." [1]https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/1... [cnbc.com] Well that sounds great, except even at 10 bucks/delivery that is only 10M/year. Which seems pretty low for a project that has cost this much. And is 1M deliveries even a blip on their daily deliveries? I could believe they deliver 10M pkgs per day and this is 1M pkgs per year.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/19/amazon-plans-drone-expansion-as-top-exec-projects-1-million-deliveries.html
range, max load, and battery recharge time? (Score:2)
range, max load, and battery recharge time?
now what happens if an drone gets stuck out side it's base and is forced to land? Gets damaged?
Cities? (Score:3)
I doubt it.
When companies throw around terms like "cities and towns" for drone logistics, they are usually talking about sprawling suburban developments with neat, wide-open lawns, not dense urban cores.
Even with this big rollout targeting nearly 500 communities, the operational reality dictates where these things can actually land:
The Footprint Illusion:
Amazon isn't building 500 new drone stations; they are counting every municipality touched by a regional network.
A single facility covers a massive swath of territory (roughly 175 square miles), which inevitably zeroes in on the suburbs and outer rings of places like Atlanta, Chicago, and Dallas rather than downtown high-rises.
The Landing Zone Problem: For a drone to safely drop a package (even a modest 5-pound shoebox-sized item), it needs a clear, unobstructed patch of ground free of overhead power lines, tight balconies, narrow alleyways, and inquisitive pets.
Try finding a reliable 2-meter drop zone in a dense neighborhood.
Not to mention it being a porch-pirate's wet dream.
Re: (Score:2)
> When companies throw around terms like "cities and towns" for drone logistics, they are usually talking about sprawling suburban developments with neat, wide-open lawns, not dense urban cores.
Well, yeah, but those are still cities. Almost twice as many people live in parts of cities that are not "dense urban cores".
And the dense areas involve apartment complexes with hundreds or thousands of units and interior halls, so they're not delivering one package to the building; they're delivering a hundred. It wouldn't make sense to send drones for that.
But if you can handle the suburban sprawl with drones, that's a huge logistics win, because that's where all the time is spent — not by somebod