Just over one year ago, Amazon announced that it is developing a drone delivery service – Prime Air – in a bid to get packages into customers’ hands within 30 minutes. How feasible is this from a cost perspective? Kiva Systems co-founder indicates drone delivery could cost as low as 20 cents/package.
In the early summer I wrote an article about the economics of Amazon’s drones where I highlighted the cost of logistics to Amazon and some back-of-the-envelope calculations about the likely costs of drone delivery. In the article I indicated that Amazon would require pilots for their drones, especially in the early years of operation, and it seems far-fetched that we will have fully autonomous delivery drones in our cities within the next ten years or so without some sort of human oversight. Backing up my calculations, a recent job advert by Amazon indicates that they are looking for drone pilots, whilst similar jobs attract annual salaries of approximately $100,000 per year.
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