You could have drone ports installed in convenient locations like Amazon locker. In fact, just build out Amazon lockers supplied by drones all over your city. They could handle like 90% of traffic? The large packages would still be delivered by humans. Or maybe ... have them dropped off at the drone port, and then have a wheeled bot make the last mile delivery, since they are quieter.
It seems like drones will mainly be delivering stuff that's locally available anyway, since otherwise it will be at least an overnight lead time and so the package might as well be delivered via truck that's cheaper to operate. If you have to go to a convenient centralized location to pick up a locally available item, you might as well just go to the store and buy the item without involving a drone.
Maybe if you have drones with a large enough service radius, you can centralize warehouses enough to have a much better selection than convenience stores. If you're still delivering to centralized lockers, though, it seems like packages could be batched in trucks as they currently are. I suspect sparsely filled trucks would still be cheaper to operate than drones, even with similar delivery times.
The value of drone based delivery really seems to me to be in getting packages exactly where they are needed faster and cheaper than sending it via direct courier.
reply