It’s a bird… it’s a plane… it’s a Big Mac with fries.
This article in BusinessWeek indicates that Uber intends to airlift meals, in this case McDonalds, within San Diego sometime this summer as long as there is no strong breeze:
“I’d come to watch Uber Elevate, the aerial arm of the $72 billion ride-¬sharing service, test food delivery by drone. The original plan was to observe the dramatic transport of a Big Mac, chicken McNuggets, and two orders of fries a half-mile away, beyond the line of sight, to the entrance of the Viejas Arena at San Diego State University. But with the wind clocking in at 26 knots—classified as a “strong breeze” on the Beaufort scale and above the limits set by the manufacturer—that trip was canceled. Instead the ¬burger-bearing drone lurched, rose 25 feet, hovered for about 60 seconds, and slowly descended.”
The article goes on to indicate a few of the limitations and barriers:
“Uber Elevate has no immediate plans to send drones to your home. Safety issues are a sticking point: A midair collision could send the devices—and their burgers—onto unsuspecting pedestrians below. Noise pollution from whirring rotors is another concern. Instead, drones will fly to designated safe landing zones where waiting couriers will pick up deliveries to bring to your door. Drones might also land on the roof of a parked Uber car outfitted with a QR code, which will transport the food to the last leg to its destination.
The company is betting that customers will demand drones for the time savings and eventually, price savings. For a delivery 1.5 miles away, ground transportation averages 21 minutes; drones can make the trip in about 7 minutes. Uber Elevate is planning to unveil its own customized drone this year, reaching speeds up to 70 mph. The company is also bullish on vertical takeoff-vertical landing vehicles for people—and predicts you’ll be tapping an Uber Air button on your smartphone by 2023.
Kate Fraser, head of policy at Uber Elevate and an FAA veteran, believes drone food delivery will take at least three years to be implemented in a handful of markets. In those cities, the company will use its cache of data to target optimal landing pads. “We can do demand modeling to decide if a drop-off place is every six or eight blocks,” she says.”
I live next to a town that established building codes that ruled out mobile towers. Based on that I imagine the noise would be particularly annoying and likely limit landing zones to relatively uninhabited locations, which might break the business model.
Overview by Tim Sloane, VP, Payments Innovation at Mercator Advisory Group
