Online retail giant Amazon announced last month it was expanding its drone delivery service to the West Valley community of Tolleson. That follows rollouts in California and Texas, but the drones will have some limitations. Most relevant for the coming months here in the Valley is they cannot fly when the temperature is above 104 degrees, which it is quite often in the summer here.
Paresh Dave, senior writer at Wired has written about this and he spoke with The Show's Mark Brodie, who asked if Amazon knew the drone it’d be using for deliveries in the Phoenix area wasn’t operational when it got above 104 degrees before it decided to offer this service here.
Full conversation
PARESH DAVE: I have to think that Amazon was well aware that these drones would be limited. But I think there are other advantages in Phoenix that outweigh it for them. You know, it's a relatively flat place, easy sort of grid layout of the city. You know, most of the time, you know, the winds aren't too crazy. So there are other advantages potentially that outweighed the fact that they might not be able to fly the entire year.
MARK BRODIE: Well, so what's the, the plan for those summer months? I mean, last summer there were days that, you know, most of the time the high didn't get below 110. And my understanding is they can't fly when it's dark out. So, what kind of options do they have?
DAVE: So, there's a couple of things. I mean, Amazon's line is that these drones will still probably be able to operate in the morning hours, you know, right after sunrise, when it hasn't, you know, gotten too hot. So that's one. Another thing is that delivery drivers at Amazon, according to past reporting, you know, continue to work until it's about 114 or 115 degrees. So you might just get your delivery,, the traditional way, you know, from a delivery van or delivery truck.
BRODIE: What happens to these drones when it gets too hot? So, I, I think, you know, they haven't been tested out in public in these conditions, but I imagine from what I understand, from engineers who've looked at these drones and, and why they struggle in, in heat is, you know, they just don't have the battery capacity to keep spinning the rotors, to the extent that's necessary when the air is a little bit hotter. And so the drones sort of would overheat. I think that's, that's the main concern. And when they overheat, I mean, you face the potential that they could fall out of the sky, right?
BRODIE: Which I would imagine neither Amazon nor the people on the ground would be all that happy about.
DAVE: No, these are, these are pretty massive, these are 80-pound devices. So, they are certainly dangerous.
BRODIE: Yeah. Well, so is this a problem with drones in general, like, is it possible that Amazon or somebody else could develop a drone that could work when it's that hot or is this just sort of a, a limitation with this kind of technology?
DAVE: No, they, there are some drones that are more temperature resistant and fly in a wider band of temperatures, both colder and hotter, but most of the drones that we, you know, are seeing being tested, around the world right now for deliveries sort of fall into this more narrow range because when you get sort of a more temperature resistant drone, I think you're expecting that the components are hardier. You might have a bigger battery so that all adds to weight, adds to other limitations that, you know, maybe you gain in being able to fly in extreme temperatures, but you can't fly as far because it's sort of heavier where can't find certain, locations as a result.
BRODIE: Well, so I guess that kind of raises the question of what the ultimate potential of this delivery method is. I mean, obviously Phoenix is hotter than a lot of places, but it's not the only place where it gets over 104 degrees, either for a day or for a stretch of time over the summer. So, what is the ultimate potential of having packages or other kinds of goods delivered by drones, do you think?
DAVE: Exactly. I think it's the latest reminder that this vision that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, you know, talked about, about a decade ago that deliveries by drone would be happening by the millions all over the place. You know, within a few short years is further off and seems to get further off. You know, every couple of years has sort of new limitations and, and new issues come to bear. It certainly hasn't helped, the, I think the companies would say that, you know, the, the Federal Aviation Administration, you know, the regulatory authority for, for airspace here in the U.S. has been kind of slow on adopting regulations. But I think it's also the technology, you know, it hasn't progressed to the point that we can sort of reliably take all the delivery trucks, that, you know, zip around the country off the roads just yet or anytime soon, really.
BRODIE: Right. So in the communities where this service has been rolled out already in Texas and California, are customers using it? Like, is it, is it a popular thing for people to use?
DAVE: So it depends. You know, I visited this town out in California wine country, last year where Amazon had first rolled out this drone delivery technology. And some of the first, you know, users of this technology basically said they only used it because Amazon gave them gift cards. But that may be, you know, an outlier. This is again, technology that's only being tested in a few places around, around the world right now. And we're seeing that one of Amazon's competitors, which is Wing, which is a sister company to Google. they've done hundreds of thousands of deliveries here in in Texas, in Australia, in Finland and some other places. But one of the things that they're doing differently is they're delivering like meals and, and food, things that, you know, kind of consumers might be more interested in rather than say, like the toothpaste or gum and things that Amazon is selling. So I think that makes a difference. And Walmart also has announced earlier this year that they've done more than 20,000 drone deliveries in, in their test so far.
BRODIE: What's interesting and you write about this is that, you know, the time that especially here in the Phoenix area that people are less inclined to leave their air conditioned homes and get into a car and go to a store and then get into the car that's been sitting outside for some amount of time and drive home is in the middle of the summer, Like, delivery would seem to be a fairly attractive option. And that, of course, is, is the time when these drones can't go, does, is Amazon confident that it's got the, the vehicle fleet to sort of make up for that and continue to be able to, to fulfill those orders in a timely manner throughout the summer.
DAVE: Yeah, I mean, I think, deliveries have been working all over the place for Amazon. One of the things, that's unique and why they chose the Phoenix area for this new drone delivery service is that their work operating out of a facility in Tolleson that is a same day delivery site. So it's sort of this new design that Amazon is rolling out to its warehouses across the country to sort of fulfill deliveries faster and using technology that enables them to have the products that people tend to order most on hand and get those deliveries out fast. And I think part of the, the choice of, you know, Phoenix was because they have this facility there and they can kind of flex between drones and regular deliveries, you know, on trucks or whatever, easily because of this facility.
BRODIE: Sure. All right. That is Paresh Dave, a senior writer at Wired Magazine. Paresh, thanks so much for the conversation. I appreciate it.
DAVE: Thank you for having me.
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