🔮 Breakout year for delivery drones

[phkrause]

Illustration: Natalie Peeples/Axios

After more than a decade of development, delivery drones are finally going mainstream, Axios transportation correspondent Joann Muller writes. Why it matters: More electric drones in the sky means fewer noisy trucks on the road and less tailpipe emission. What's happening: With some (but not all) regulatory hurdles cleared, retailers, medical centers and logistics platforms will start offering drone delivery in many more suburban neighborhoods in '24. That means receiving meals, prescriptions and household items at your doorstep in less than 30 minutes. 💨 Catch up quick: Until recently, commercial drone operators weren't permitted to fly their aircraft long distances without visual spotters. Having observers staged every mile or so along a drone's route is impractical and costly, which is why companies couldn't afford to scale up drone deliveries. Instead, they were limited to trips within a mile or so of retail partners, including Walmart and Walgreens. That changed last fall when the FAA began authorizing some drone operators to fly their aircraft "beyond the visual line of sight" (BVLOS). That key breakthrough has opened the door for companies like Zipline, Wing and Amazon to begin more widespread drone deliveries this year. Amazon — where executive chairman Jeff Bezos first floated the idea of drone delivery back in 2013 — is ramping up toward a goal of 500 million drone deliveries a year by the end of the decade. Amazon has been operating in just two communities (Lockeford, Calif., and College Station, Texas) using dedicated drone fulfillment hubs. In 2024, Amazon will add a third U.S. site, plus two more in Europe, before accelerating its push in subsequent years. It's also introducing a smaller, quieter delivery drone, which will be fully integrated into Amazon's delivery network this year. That means Amazon trucks, vans and drones will depart from the same building, giving customers access to faster delivery of a greater selection. Wing, a subsidiary of Alphabet, has completed over 350,000 deliveries so far, the vast majority in Australia. In the U.S., it's making deliveries for Walmart within a 6-mile range of two superstores in the Dallas area and for certain retailers in Christiansburg, Va. Other companies, including Walmart-backed DroneUp and Israel's Flytrex, are also planning to expand this year without the limitation of human observers.