Is Amazon's Drone Delivery Finally Ready for Prime Time?

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Right.

Well, here we go, Kevin.

Casey, where are we?

We are here in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona, in a part of town that is known as By the Airport.

And

it's got a lot of really amazing things, such as a Marriott and some office buildings.

You know, believe it or not, Kevin, a younger version of me lived just a few miles away.

You were in Arizona.

I was sort of cutting my teeth, as they say,

practicing the trade of journalism at the Arizona Republic.

And then after I did it for six and a half years, I was allowed to leave.

And so I did.

I also feel like Phoenix has become like the kind of like testing ground for a lot of our great technology companies, you know, like Waymo's are now, they were in Phoenix before they were in a lot of places.

These drones we're about to see are here because it's like it has good weather year-round.

It's hot and dry.

Hot and dry.

It turns out to be a good recipe for testing new technology.

Exactly.

And, you know, maybe they're a little more loose about stuff like regulation.

Oh, no, they are a lot more loose about regulation.

I knew it was time to leave Phoenix when I went into a coffee shop and I went went to order coffee and there's just a guy sitting like reading with his gun on the table.

And I thought, there's no call for that, sir.

No one is like, I just,

he really said, if you touch my Java.

Yeah, he really said, don't talk to me before I have my coffee.

I'm Kevin Roos, a tech columnist at the New York Times.

I'm Casey Newton from Platform.

And this is Hard Fork.

This week, we're in Arizona to test out Amazon Prime Air, the company's initiative to deliver items to your door in 60 minutes or less via a flying drone.

All right, Casey, we are here in Phoenix.

What are we doing here?

Well, today we have been invited to sample Amazon's latest and possibly craziest way way of getting goods to customers, drones.

And the idea of using drones to deliver packages in the air is not a new one.

Amazon first released at least the concept of a drone delivery program more than a decade ago.

And since then, the company has tested drone delivery service in Lockford, California.

And they also offer a version of it in College Station, Texas.

But this new program here in the West Valley Phoenix metro area of Arizona is the next major step for Amazon to prove that this service can work at scale.

So the company invited us to check it out.

We said yes.

And then all hell broke loose on the East Coast as seemingly everyone who looked out the window in New Jersey saw a swarm of drones.

Yes.

And we won't spoil it, but let's just say we got to the bottom of whether these drones belong to Amazon or not.

Yeah, we got a conclusive answer on that one.

And

we also learned a lot more about Amazon's drone program, their aspirations for it, why it's taking so long to get these things up into the sky.

And we actually got to see a delivery ourselves.

Yeah.

And I mean, look, if you're listening to this and you have concerns about a bunch of drones becoming the default way that Amazon delivers goods, so do we.

This was one of the reasons why we wanted to actually come down to the facility, talk to the people who run it, because that's not obviously a good idea to us.

And so we wanted to put some of those questions to them.

At the same time, I will admit, it is cool to watch things fly and take off and land.

And that is another reason why we wanted to do this.

Yes.

So let's go over to the Amazon facility and see how these things are delivering packages.

All right, so we are here at an Amazon facility.

This is SAZ2

outside of Phoenix.

And we're here with David Carbon.

He is the vice president and general manager of Amazon Prime Air.

Did I get your title correct?

You did.

You're one of the first.

Thank you.

Okay.

And we're going to see their new drone operation and we're in the middle of this facility, which is huge, but apparently very small by Amazon standards, where things are moving around and being packed and shipped off to people maybe for the holidays.

Casey, you look great in your safety vest.

Thank you, thank you, as do you, as do all of us, really.

Yeah, well, let's hear more.

Let's go see some stuff.

Let's see how it works, yeah.

Now, the part of the facility that handles the drone deliveries, do you call that the drone zone?

That's very good.

We should have, had we thought about it, but no, we call it the paddock.

Okay.

Drone delivery center.

Okay.

And that's at the other end of this facility.

Well, that's not as catchy as the drone zone.

So if you want to take that name, it's free.

I'll give it to you without a royalty.

It's not.

It's not as catchy.

We're too far into it now to change it.

So we're sticking with that.

Okay, well call me next time when you're doing something.

I will.

It is very good.

Okay, all right.

So you're doing these drone deliveries now, but you're processing them out of a facility that also processes deliveries that go out on vans the traditional way.

When an order comes in that's going to be sent to a customer on a drone, does it go through the same process up until the very end or does it sort of get put off into a separate process as soon as the thing comes into the warehouse?

It pretty well follows the same process till the point that it becomes a prime air package.

And we'll walk you through that.

But the only difference when we get to the end is rather than them puts your order into a bag or into an envelope, they put it into a primeir box which we use to put inside the drone and then the drone then delivers to the house which you folks will see tonight.

Cool.

All right let's take the tour.

Okay so

these are picking stations.

So we're looking at some

employees sort of picking and packing

packers envelopes and boxes.

They're putting it onto a conveyor belt.

The conveyor belt's taking it up and away.

So this is the special drone box.

This is a special drone box.

And to the neck and eye, it looks like an ordinary box.

It's got a hidden floor, right?

So, you think there's probably about you know, it's got some padding in there.

Yeah, so that basically acts what we call as a trampoline, right?

It's got some give in it.

And every delivery goes in this box, whether it's a tube of toothpaste or something that might take up the whole box.

So, here's a order, it's just come in and it's going into one of the special drone boxes that has the cushion at the bottom, yes.

So,

his item was picked from behind.

He's now going to pack it.

This is like a super small item that's going into a fairly large box.

That's why I'd like to go and ship in 1910.

That looked like it might have been like a tube of lipstick or something.

I couldn't tell, but it was like a gift card, I think.

Oh, it's a gift card.

Could be.

So, now what happens is the package goes to what we call a water spider.

A water?

A water spider?

Yeah, water spider is a manufacturing operations term for somebody that takes a package from one point to the next.

So what we're going to do, we're going to walk the package down the path it would take to get to the paddock.

So we shouldn't dilly deli because somebody's waiting here.

Yeah, let's go.

Let's go, people.

Okay, so we are here at the paddock.

David, what happens when a box gets out of the warehouse and comes over to this facility?

This is the official handover.

There should be music when these happens.

This This is the official handover from the subsaim day center.

That's now a package given to the drone airport.

And then they'll put it in the drone and send it on its way.

So these are the new version of the Amazon drones.

These are the MK30s, right?

MK30 Block 10.

They're larger than I thought they were.

They're like the size of like

a Labrador retriever or something.

I've never heard them described as that, but maybe a little bigger.

I don't know.

Yeah, for the listener, it's probably about the size of a Labrador, but if you think about it, it's probably three and a half feet as fuselage, and everything else is control surface, so an upper and a lower control wing, and then six motors around it.

The front part is systems, like cameras forward facing, two on the outside, two looking down.

And then you've got your battery on the top, you've got your compute underneath, and everything else is empty space for a package.

Yeah, let's go see a takeoff.

I want to see this Labrador go.

So now guys stay within the green line.

Stay within the green line.

No funny business.

So we're seeing one of these big

MK-30 drones.

It's like on the sort of like launch pad.

It's got a, we're in sort of, you know, a section of a parking lot that's been sort of fenced off.

This is the airport.

We were in the airport.

We're in the airport, yes, and we are watching

takeoff

airport,

essentially.

And yeah, it's sort of pointed upright and it's gonna take off vertically.

It's blue and white.

It has an Amazon logo on the tail.

If you were picturing like a drone like you would get your child for Christmas, this is not that.

It is

much larger.

Yeah, this, this,

how much do these things weigh?

80 pounds.

80 pounds.

Just under 80 pounds.

Like a Labrador.

Yeah, I have.

A Labrador is about 80 pounds.

Yeah.

Ready?

So now we're hot, right?

So watch this.

Okay.

It'll run through a sequence now.

You'll see those motors spin.

Okay, it's powering up.

It says, I'm good.

Motors have just lightly spun.

Now they spin.

Nine.

Now we sort of activate.

Seven, six.

Check each motor profile.

Four, three,

two,

one.

Five little gift card.

Have a good trip.

So if you think about it,

you only hear it for about a minute at either end

and then it's gone.

Yeah, it's like a temporary, very loud swarm of bees.

Well, it's not very loud.

Oh, wow.

It's not very loud at all.

If I'm taking a nap and one of these things flies over.

You won't hear it inside.

You don't.

You won't see it.

No way.

But if I'm out on the hammock, I'm waking up.

Oh, the hammock.

If you've got the benefit of having a hammock, right?

But you can't hear that.

You can see it, but you can't hear it.

Yeah.

Yeah, now I can't.

see what is the range of these things how far away can you go 11 kilometers 12 kilometers ultimately i'm american you're gonna have to put that in miles um

like eight miles yeah eight miles have you ever lost one no

come back no well

we treat them well

they've got no reason not to come back and so we've got two launch pads three landing pads so we can deconflict and cycle.

I see.

This is one coming back.

This is one coming back.

So

we can run both these pads at the same time.

So, what the drone is doing is stopping, it's checking in its conformance volume that nothing is obscuring its path and it's clear to land.

And it'll come down and it'll land on the pad.

Fully redundant safety system, so there's no single points of safety critical failure.

And is an operator landing this or it is

all the time?

Now, I have to say, it's quite loud when it's coming down and taking off.

I have to disagree.

Yeah, I mean, that just seems like if that's flying through your neighborhood, you're going to notice.

Let's take you where we're going today, where you'll have general aviation, helicopters, cessners, and golf carts.

And then let's revisit your idea of that.

Okay, okay.

Because I think this thing's 40% quieter than the previous drone.

And we're in the 70s from decibel rating.

And if you listen to the acoustics of the drone, it's pretty soothing, right?

If you think about noise,

like a buzz, a mosquito buzzing, is a pain, right?

But that doesn't mean the decibels are high, right?

It's the type of sound.

So we work really hard on the type of sound of the drone to bring it into modulation that people can actually appreciate rather than thinking about it.

Maybe you should put some Christmas music on the things,

have them sing a little ice cream sound.

That would cause you to come out of your affluent hand.

The Wicked soundtrack?

People love Wicked.

You can just play the Wicked soundtrack.

My wife fortunately just went and watched it without me, so I feel very good about it.

I'm not a musical guy, but

to put in perspective your idea of it's loud, we're about, what, 12 feet away from where it's taking off?

Yeah, I mean, if I were next if I were this close to a normal plane I would have to be wearing air protection

yeah

yeah I mean I think you know if if one or two of these landed in your neighborhood during the day I don't think you would really notice or mind I think if this becomes the dominant way that people get their Amazon deliveries it might be more emission it'll never be the dominant way no no way um and ultimately we'll never do much more than 10% of what people are going to order anyway because of what we can take.

This is just another option to get get people what they need really quickly.

Well, David, thank you for the tour of your...

What do you call this?

The launch pad?

Haddock.

The paddock.

The Haddock.

Yeah.

And not to be confused with Haddock, which is a type of fish.

No, it's not a Haddock.

It's not a fish.

But you can order a Haddock through Prime Air if you go to the right place, I think.

I haven't checked that.

I'm pretty sure we're done.

No groceries yet?

Okay, we're not dropping fish for this.

Statement for making

a future announcement.

That'd be messy, isn't it?

That'd be messy.

But now we get to go do a drone order of our own.

Yep.

Is that right?

Yep.

We're going to go to a local property.

Yep.

And we're going to order.

And seeing is believing, right?

This is the key.

When you go to someone's house and you see what a regular backyard looks like or a regular front yard, because we're delivering to empty space,

you see the dynamic nature of an environment, and that's when you really see the genius.

Like this, at the end of the day, is a choreographed paddock, right?

This is the way it's meant to run.

When you see what's happening in someone's house, that's cool.

Yes, cool.

Let's go see that when we come back.

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All right, so after our tour of the Amazon facility, Kevin and I, along with our producers Rachel and Ryan, drove about 12 minutes to a nearby house that Amazon had rented to test drone deliveries.

The house was in a suburban neighborhood, lots of neatly laid-out homes with similar size front and backyards.

It had a pool, and it jutted up against a golf course, which wound up being kind of funny.

So we sat down at a table there with David, who, as a reminder, oversees all aspects of the Prime Air program, not just here in Arizona, but all over the world.

I would like to try placing an order with Prime Air and seeing.

Seeing it come to this place where we are.

We're in like a rented house in the suburbs of Phoenix.

Can we place an order?

And then it'll place an order.

Okay, Okay, so Casey, I went through the product list.

So you all have like something like how many package, how many different types of items can be delivered by drone today?

I ran 60,000.

60,000.

Okay, so I didn't go through all 60,000, but I did pick a few out of the list that I wanted to get your take on.

Yeah, some gems.

Some gems.

So

some of the items that we can order in an hour or less are a cheese grater,

a copy of the children's book Good Night, Good Night construction site.

That was potentially for my kid.

I know he would love that.

There's something called called Brazilian bum bum cream that we can order.

That's for two bums at the same time?

Exactly.

A copy of the U.S.

Constitution.

Every house needs one.

Or dental floss.

I do actually have something stuck in my teeth right now.

I didn't want to bring it up, actually.

Yeah.

So which of those sounds best to you?

I mean, I think I'm really, it's to me, it's somewhere between the bum bum cream and the U.S.

Constitution.

Where are you leaning?

I think we should get the bum bum cream just because I don't even know what that is.

I don't know what it is either.

You ditched your child very quickly.

He's got enough books.

The holidays are coming up.

He's going to be getting enough stuff.

Okay.

So we can get,

yeah, Brazilian bum bum cream by Sol de Janeiro.

It's visibly firming cream.

I don't know.

It will firm us.

It will firm us.

This took a very dark turn very quickly.

Well, you sell it.

You're buying it.

We're just perusing the.

Okay, so now I go to the cart and I go to checkout.

And just so people know, how much is the bum bum cream?

It's $24.

Okay.

All right.

What are are they put in that cream?

So the drone delivery, it says for one item is $9.99.

That's like, that's just a charge that you tack on.

Okay, so I'm going to say within.

Oh, and then it wants me to confirm.

It shows me like a little satellite picture here of the house.

So it's basically, it's making sure that you know where in your house it's going to drop off.

Yeah, so this is going to drop off in the backyard by the pool.

And it says a selected area must be kept clear of people, pets, and objects.

So I will continue.

I will use this delivery area.

Oh, so that's it.

So if you had a dog, you'd want to bring the dog inside while you were getting the delivery?

Yeah, you want to get it out of the way of the delivery area.

But what you're doing now happens the first time.

I see.

Like you would any other order.

So it's the first time you're doing it.

When you do it, if we order the next package, which presumably will be the Constitution.

which is very patriotic of us.

And you wouldn't have to go through this again, unless you wanted to change that delivery location, of which in some properties properties you'll get up to three choices.

In this, it's pretty tight outside, it's a tight environment with the pool and the shrubs and the golf course behind us and that sort of stuff.

So, do you always try to deliver in the backyard or do you do the front yard as well?

We don't care.

Okay, as long as it's got the available space, we'll deliver it.

Got it.

Okay, so it's it looks like a pretty standard Amazon checkout process, except for this sort of delivery area thing.

And then I'm going to go ahead and place that order.

And then it says by 2.16 p.m.

today, which is in exactly one hour,

we are predicted to get a delivery by drone.

So while we wait for our drone delivery to show up, David, we do have some more questions for you.

I want to start by asking about different drones, the ones that are currently flying over New Jersey.

People are very upset about this.

There's a lot of people who are going outside and taking photos of them and posting them on social media.

This has become like a big national news story.

Are those your drones?

Are those Amazon drones?

They are absolutely not Amazon drones.

All right.

Period.

Okay.

We can rule that one out.

We've moved that story forward, Kevin.

Yes.

Yeah.

So cutting edge journalism.

Yeah.

Not us.

But I do want to ask you about this, not because I think you have any, you know, special knowledge or insight about these particular drones, but because I think it's the reaction that people are having.

I'm wondering if you watch that as someone who wants to take commercial delivery drones mainstream and says, oh, this might actually be challenging.

People's reaction when they see drones flying above them in the sky, at least if people in New Jersey are typical, is not, oh, this is great.

Let's invite them to come to our neighborhood.

It's get this thing out of my face.

Get this thing out of the sky.

People don't like nuisance.

Yeah.

Right.

So

we would have the same reaction.

It was like 500 motorcycles out the front of your house.

You'd have the same reaction.

And so, you know, we've been purposeful about integrating into airspace, integrating into aerospace fundamentals in order that we're like everybody else that legitimately flies or legitimately does commercial delivery or legitimately moves a passenger or a package.

And that's the key.

It's, you know, none of us want to be messed around with at our house, right?

And particularly when you have no control over it.

So, you know, whoever's doing it, stop it.

And, you know, like aerospace regulation is

it's the law.

Yeah.

I guess the question I have is like people from a distance of a couple of hundred feet up in the sky, you can't tell if a drone is up there delivering packages or if it's part of some, you know, surveillance operation.

It seems like it's scary to people.

So how do you change the culture where when people see something flying in the air above them, their first thought is not, oh no, I'm under attack.

It's, oh, here's my Amazon package.

Yeah, I don't know that I would categorize as people's first thought when they see something in the air, I'm under attack.

Not in this country, at least.

I mean, I heard people on the news talking about wanting to shoot these things out of the air.

They're New Yorkers.

Look, I grew up under a flight.

I'm probably the wrong guy to ask.

You know, my dad worked for Qantas.

I worked, you know, I've been involved with aviation or been exposed to it all my life.

I grew up under a flight path about five miles from an airport.

So to me, seeing things in the sky is still, holy cow, how does something like that fly?

People don't want to be bothered.

And if they're bothered, they're upset.

And if they're upset, they're vocal.

And our job in the commercial drone delivery industry is not to be a nuisance.

So let's go back in time to 2013 when Jeff Bezos originally unveiled the vision

of Prime Air.

He did a big segment on 60 Minutes and he framed this as a huge disruption that was coming to the world of package delivery.

And I took him to be saying essentially that we have to build this because someone's going to build this and customers want fast delivery and we're going to be the ones to give it to them.

Is that still the vision for Primea today?

Yeah.

I mean, our mission is to deliver a delivery capability that's capable of delivering 500 million packages a year within 30 minutes of order.

That's our job.

And the one thing we know is

people are never going to compromise safety for speed.

Right.

No, if I said to you, you know, something bad's going to happen, but I'll get you your package in 10 minutes, you're never going to order, right?

So we've got this bar for safety that is an aerospace bar for safety that's assessed by the FAA.

And then as delivery experience gets faster, people will shop more, right?

So,

to me, it's an imperative.

If you're going to be in e-commerce, you have to be able to get people things fast.

And that's what we're here to solve in these particular types of environments.

So, Kevin just brought up 2013, the vision is announced.

I know you guys have been doing a lot since then, but I still cannot use one of these things to get a delivery in my house in San Francisco.

So, what's been taking so long?

It's really really hard.

It's like

this is not about can a drone fly, right?

Wright brothers prove things can fly.

It's not about can a drone carry something.

It really is about developing a technology suite to deliver packages at scale where people live around the world.

And to do that, you have to fundamentally start with what's the safety target you have to have.

And for us, that is

magnitude safer than general aviation and a magnitude safer than driving to the store.

And that's what we're designing up into.

On top of that, Amazon's been going for 30 years, right?

So you have to integrate into an existing Amazon stack that

has been able to take orders.

Firstly, it was

a couple of days, then it was one day, then it was subsame day in a big fulfillment network.

And really, if you think about what we have to do, the fastest we normally can do anything is two hours.

We have to get that package from the point of click

to us at the drone fulfillment center or the paddock within 15 minutes.

Some of these facilities, you can't walk from one end to the other in 15 minutes.

So let's talk about regulatory hurdles because my understanding is that's a big piece of why this has taken so long to get these things up and running.

What has been the hardest thing to get the FAA to sign off on within the U.S.?

Regulation isn't the holdup.

The reality is nobody was really ready to go and execute deliveries at any form of scale in open airspace that wasn't over paddocks and fields where no one lived anyway, regardless of the FAA.

And I think the industry needs to own up to that.

I mean, they spend a lot of time lobbying for

ignoring standards or aerospace conventions.

And certainly from the minute I walked in, at least, and I know this was Amazon's position anyway, anyway, we were advocating that there needed to be a policy framework, there needed to be a regulatory framework, and it needed to be steeped in aerospace practice.

But you do need specific licenses and approvals, like to operate a drone outside of what's called the line of sight.

That takes a special kind of certification.

So, there were hoops that you had to jump through, but you're saying this was not what kept the industry.

No, you still need, you still need a drone, you still need a safe drone system of systems, right?

So, it's a bit like saying oh, there's no roads, but you don't have a car, or there's no roads, but you have this car that you built in your garage, but every third time you start it up, it blows up.

So the bottleneck was the hardware, in other words, not the regulatory.

The software, hardware, the integration of all of it, working out how you integrate into airspace.

And then if you had all of that, then you need a framework.

And in around 2022, the FA got really serious about how it handled this space.

And through whether it be policy or or whether it be the establishment of a section that focused on this area, we were able to work through what that policy suite looked like for this type of drone.

I'm not suggesting for one minute the framework was there.

Don't get me wrong, but I would argue vehemently that no one was ready.

Even if it was there, no one could build into it anyway.

There was some reporting by Bloomberg about some of the incidents and crashes that had happened with the drones at the Pendleton Oregon facility, facility, including one in 2021 where there was a drone fell out of the sky, caught on fire, and ended up sparking something like a 20-acre brush fire.

What was the story there and how confident are you that something like that isn't going to happen with these latest drones?

It's test, right?

So if you test for failure, you get failure.

And you test in controlled environments, right, where you can have a fire like that and you have emergency response ready to emergence, you know, respond emergently.

And so it makes for good news, but doesn't make for great engineering, right?

I would be skeptical if somebody wasn't testing something to failure in this mode.

Now, if you've got a big commercial aeroplane, well, you're not flying it into the ground, right?

So that was an intentional crash.

That wasn't like a malfunction in the system.

That particular case was a malfunction in the system,

but it was a malfunction we were testing for.

So we'd induce that malfunction.

You know, we have the luxury of not having humans in danger.

And so therefore, the hardware is not so expensive that you wouldn't test it to failure.

So as I said, it makes great news.

But if you ever interview a technologist or an engineer that is not testing stuff to failure, I would be highly skeptical about what they're putting up around the public.

Right.

Tell us about, we have some sort of questions about various scenarios that we think are in people's minds when they think about a retailer like Amazon putting a bunch of drones up in the sky and delivering products.

One of them is just, what do they do about the sort of tall trees and other like, you know, dense areas?

How are they able to avoid those?

That's a really great question.

So stuff that's there is not dynamic.

Now, things like trees grow, right?

And so we, our

algorithms, our sense and avoid algorithm and our perception algorithm

is trained over hundreds of thousands of data sets, right?

We have another group called DA2, which basically stands for data collection it's a second fleet where we put our cameras on a for want of a better word a mule fleet and we go and take aerial images of different environments from the ground you know phone sticks and attached to helicopters and all this sort of stuff and we use that to train our algorithm and so That's one part of our safety layer.

The other part of our safety layer is to then go and say, does that look like it's meant to look?

And if it doesn't, is it safe?

Third part of our safety, it doesn't look the way it's meant to look and it's not within the profile that I can deliver.

So therefore, I'm out of here.

I imagine that another thing that people are going to be thinking when they hear about Amazon drones potentially coming to their neighborhoods is, what if they hit stuff up there?

I mean, what if they collide with a plane or a bird or, you know, maybe a stationary object that's, you know, tall in the sky?

Talk to us about that.

Yeah, we shouldn't hit anything.

Like we hit something, something's wrong.

You know, someone's trying to hit us if we hit something because we've designed the drone to sense and avoid.

So it can avoid a bird.

Yeah, you can avoid some of the birds.

I mean, the bird's going to want to go straight at the drone.

The bird's coming off second best.

I mean, that's how it sort of works.

This is a message to birds.

Do not mess with the drone.

Birds are unnoticed.

Look, we have...

done everything that's humanly possible to sense and avoid what's around us and sense and avoid.

We're not going to be flying into aeroplanes.

We're not going to be flying into static objects.

We're not going to be landing on things we shouldn't be landing on.

The bottom line, that's part of what you design for, right?

And anyone, like if your listeners sort of know anything about aerospace design or even automotive design, right?

You lay out your failure cases.

You lay out what those allowances need to be.

And in aerospace, we design through redundant systems.

So, you know, the drone can lose a motor, it can lose a prop, it can lose compute, it can lose battery, and it's going to get back home.

I'm curious on the sort of sensing and avoiding of it all.

Uh, I know that most of the systems are automated.

Do you also have a way for like a remote operator to sort of take control of a camera and say, like, oh, yeah, that actually is a crane we didn't expect and do something?

Or how does that work?

No, an operator can't take control of the vision.

In fact, that's not how it works.

Um, an operator can abort a mission, they have two options: launch and abort.

Um, and we have the same two options in a podcast, by the way, but go on.

It's not live.

That's the difference.

But, you know, if they see something dynamically happening that the drone isn't seeing, which, you know, frankly is

0.0% or nothing, that's not going to happen.

But they can, if they're concerned about something that's dynamically happening, they can abort

the mission.

And abort means the thing will turn around, come home.

Right.

One more thing that I think we should talk about is the risk that people will try to take these things out of the air.

There was a man who was arrested in Florida earlier this year for trying to shoot down a Walmart delivery drone with a pistol.

It's Walmart, right?

Yes.

A judge recently ordered that man to pay $5,000 in compensation.

But I think this is a fair question to ask of Amazon as it...

goes through this delivery drone process because people, some number of them are just going to hate these things flying around.

Some of them may try to take a shot at it.

So have you had that happen?

Do you plan on that happening?

What are the contingency plans if that tries to happen?

Are you going to be prosecuting people?

Talk to us about this.

We have not had that happen.

Will it happen?

Probably.

If it does, we'll use the full force of the law.

I mean, it's federally

dictated airspace.

So it's like shooting in an airplane.

And if you're silly enough to do that, well, then you're going to jail.

It's just that simple.

Last one of these concerns, and I have to say, this was actually Kevin's idea.

And so I'm just going to steal it.

Do you want to do it?

No, do it.

Oh, you shot me a look.

It's a really good idea.

I hadn't thought of it.

So here's the idea.

The idea is you see an Amazon drone coming in and you think, aha, I can take that off the lawn and resell it.

So is there any concern that the drones are going to inspire a new generation of porch pirates who can just watch for where the drone lands and then go grab the package?

You've stumped me.

No, look, I'm not because unlike dropping something off at someone's front door, we're typically dropping stuff off in someone's backyard, right?

So we've got that advantage.

And typically, if you need something in 30 minutes, and in this case, if you're in Phoenix and you've paid for it, you're going to want it in 30 minutes.

You've been typically standing by to get it.

I mean, I know how keen you are to get the butt cream.

He's very bum bum cream, isn't it?

Bum bum cream.

And he's very keen.

Let's just say.

So, you know, we're listening out for the drone.

We're waiting for it to come.

Now, we're not going to hear the drone from inside, but, you know, we know it's coming.

It gave us a time.

So if you want something that keenly,

you're going to get to it before anybody else.

We have to ask about the cost.

And I know you're not going to answer, but I think every, once they, particularly if they see the video and, you know, the entire production, they're going to say, how much money is Amazon losing on these deliveries?

So I know you can't answer it, but like, tell me, like, could this possibly be profitable ever?

Yeah, absolutely.

And by the way, if you do want to tell us how much money Amazon's losing on every delivery via drone, feel free to do that.

I would like to think of it as an investment.

Okay.

Okay.

How much money is Amazon investing in every drone delivery?

Look,

the one thing Amazon does better than any other company in the world that I have seen in my time is we take long-term bets.

And we take those long-term bets on behalf of our customers.

So if,

you know, imagine the mocking you would have got, I'm going to sell books on the internet.

And 30 years later, look what you've got, right?

So this is just the very start.

And our models show that at the end of the day, you know, when we say by 2029, I want to deliver 500 million deliveries, we're cost positive

because you can't deliver packages indefinitely at a loss, right?

But at the end of the day, right now, this is learning to scale up to where we need to be.

And if you think about the flywheel, it's pretty simple, right?

The more customers you can serve, the more packages you can deliver, the more locations you can operate,

the cost comes down.

My questions are sort of around like the density of packages.

I mean, it seems to me like Amazon and every other e-commerce retailer depends on being very optimized in the fulfillment centers, in the, you know, packing the packages tightly into vans and trucks and sending them out on optimized routes.

Like sending things one at a time on a drone seems seems incredibly inefficient.

And I just don't understand how you get to the kind of unit costs and economics that you have with something like traditional delivery if you're only able to send out one package or even a handful of packages at a time.

Most people order about 1.4, 1.6 packages at a time.

I'm not talking about people ordering multiple things at a time.

I'm talking about like a bunch of, you know, hundreds of packages go into an Amazon van that goes door-to-door delivering stuff.

That goes along a very optimized route.

It's not doing like one trip to the warehouse, one trip to a person's house, one trip back to the warehouse like these drones are.

That's

incredibly inefficient.

10 minutes.

Okay.

10 minutes.

And look how many people are working at the fulfillment center today.

When you can cycle 21 with that many people, it literally all is cycling.

If you deliver one package to 12 people or you deliver 21 packages for 12 people, the cost of the package is less because you pay for the drone once.

Right.

So

do I want somebody being able to order as many packages as they can fit in that box up to five pounds?

Absolutely.

And that'll come by the end of one queue next year we'll have that.

Do I want you being able to order,

build a basket?

Say, look, I want all these things delivered to me by drone in the next hour.

Yep, we're not there yet.

But the reality is

when you think about 10 minutes back and forth doing 21 cycles off those two pads utilizing 12 drones,

There's the magic right there.

It's cycling.

Over a longer period of time, do you hope that that drone can carry 10, 15, 20 pounds?

Do you see the drone sort of making multiple stops?

Not that morphology.

We'll create a different morphology.

You mean like a different shape of

it?

You're going to have to use small words around KCAs.

I know what a morphology is.

He's very good, actually.

I studied morphology in college.

He's morphing right now.

My grandfather was a morphologist.

I'm sorry, go ahead.

We will need to look that up.

We will create different shape for

where we need to go.

But this drone size, it is the backbone.

Because if you think about the way this thing is set up, it's to get into backyards or yards or spaces like the one we've got now.

And there'll be some stuff we release next year

which will show the utility of this drone.

utilizing other delivery modes for sure.

So people can now get deliveries via drone if they live in the designated area.

I assume you chose Phoenix because the weather is very mild here.

It's, you know, there's not a lot of rain, not a lot of snow.

For people who live in parts of the world where there is worse weather, should those people expect to wait longer before something like Amazon Prime Air is available in their area?

Our plan is to start rolling out at scale effective next year.

And, you know, this drone has been set out for where our customers are anywhere in the world.

That's how we designed it.

Now, we're not going to be doing icing conditions, but arguably no one's flying in icing conditions.

Look what happens when it's icing at the airport.

Aeroplanes are getting sprayed.

It's chaos, you know, that sort of stuff.

But that's what it's been designed for.

And by the end of 2026,

we'll be doing low-light deliveries, nighttime deliveries, you know, that sort of stuff.

So this is just the start.

And you're right, like.

putting a gift card in a box and shipping it somewhere,

that's not the end.

That's the beginning.

What about dense places, places where people maybe don't have a backyard with an area big enough to drop a package in?

What about people who live in apartment buildings?

That's a wonderful question you should ask me midway through next year.

We do deliver to apartments today.

If you have like a good enough landing pad for them.

Yeah.

Well, it's not even a landing pad, it's a delivery location.

A delivery location.

Not to be pedantic, but

hang on to that question next year because it will answer itself.

Let's just say the delivery location has to have a certain morphology in order to be

configuration.

Yeah.

A certain configuration.

All right.

I have another efficiency question.

Really, basically anytime on the show we talk about any kind of physical technology, our listeners want us to ask about the environmental impact.

So what can you talk about the environmental impact of making a delivery that requires a custom drone to, you know, fly maybe eight miles and back?

And

is there anything that you can do to kind of mitigate that impact?

I love it.

It's a great question because we design, you know, we've got the climate pledge, right?

Amazon climate pedge.

And so we designed the drone to be recyclable.

The materials will be used in a recyclable fashion.

It's

got a battery powered, which is not emitting

anything along the way.

And so really right now, you know, unless we're running an electric van,

it's the most environmentally conscious way of delivering.

Now, when you get into a van, a Rubyan van, for instance, carrying more packages.

So

it's hard for a drone that we've created to do this sort of mission to compete with that.

But at the end of the day, it works backwards from the climate pledge.

We're going to pause because we're going to go outside.

Oh, the drone is here.

The drone is here.

Our drone is here, and that means we got to go outside and pick it up.

When we come back, we'll tell you what's in the box.

What's in the box, Kevin?

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We've now moved to the rear morphology of the home

where we're awaiting the arrival of an Amazon drone with Kevin's bum bum cream.

It's technically our bum bum cream.

We purchased that as a joint operation.

We did.

So we are in the...

Now we are in the backyard of this house.

We are waiting for the Amazon drone to arrive with our package and it's going to come flying out of the sky from some direction and it's going to drop the package ideally onto the lawn behind us.

We're next to a golf course also and it looks like someone's in the sand trap so sorry about that.

I mean there's a chance he could hit the drone with the ball if he if he shanks it to the right.

Honestly that'd be pretty impressive.

Here comes our drone.

Look, it's just like we predicted.

It came out of nowhere.

Okay wow.

Okay.

Here we go.

All right.

Hello.

Okay.

It's a time to fight us.

Making sure it's safe to land, I guess.

Slowly descending.

All right.

It's coming down.

Casey, go grab it.

No!

Wow!

It's a not touchdown.

It's a not touchdown.

It just dropped.

I don't know why I assumed it would touch down.

Thank you.

Okay, so the drone just came over.

It descended to a height of around 14 feet.

A little compartment opened in the bottom, and then the package that we ordered dropped onto the lawn in a little cushioned box.

And then the drone just elevated and flew away, and it's already out of sight again.

Sure, go see what's in our box.

Casey, this is your Christmas present from me.

Oh, good, great.

Yeah,

all right,

And what do you know?

Our Brazilian bum-bum cream.

For the man who has everything.

For the man who has everything.

Look at that.

Amazing.

It's a caffeine-rich guarana extract.

And in the words of Sol de Janeiro, love it, flaunt it, you've got it.

That's what it says on the package.

Love it, flaunt it, you got it.

Hello.

You guys from Amazon.

Yeah.

Well, you scared the death life out of a lot of people.

What the hell's that?

What's going on?

Associate you guys with New Jersey?

Yeah.

Yeah.

A little difference.

They're probably 16, 17 year olds having fun.

You guys are a lot older.

I'm from the New York Times.

I'm from Amazon.

Yeah, yeah.

The Amazon, you know.

So, what the heck?

I'm Kevin.

Kevin, I'm Gino.

Gino, nice to meet you.

Neighbor Gino.

Nice to meet you.

So you've seen a number of these.

You've seen a number of these drones.

Well,

I come out one day, I seen the truck, and I seen all that equipment.

The first thing that hit me, well, it's a rental, they're doing a, you know, porno here.

Yeah, yeah.

Has that happened before?

Not here, but I have no other places that have happened.

Drive delivery porn.

No, this is part of the series.

So then when I went in there and I talked to a girl out in front, she says, you have their, it's Amazon to film.

So I came here.

So I said, well, shit, maybe I can get in the...

In the movie saying, hey, look at the old man.

You're waiting for his drone to happen.

You want to know his Biakra to come in the mail.

You want to use this screen

jania thank you very much

thanks gina thanks gino

don't shoot the drones please they're a legend

kevin stacey can you just recap what happened yeah

please don't put my clutch back we were

we had just we had just sort of picked up our drone delivery when uh a neighbor popped over to sort of see what the commotion was about uh he apparently helps to take care of the pool that was an amazon drone yes dude yeah any feedback?

You just dropped it?

Yep, from about 14 feet high.

And if you live in this area, you can get anything that they offer within one hour.

Oh, cool.

Yeah.

Say it, guys.

Thank you.

So

that was where the house abuts a golf course.

And so a couple of golfers just stopped by.

We assumed they were hard fork fans, but it turns out they want to know what the drone was.

So yeah, so we met Gino, the neighbor, who was taking care of the pool and stopped by to kind of

share stories from his life and his impressions of

drones.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then we talked to some golfers.

So it's really rallying the community to say, hey, what is that thing?

Yes.

There do seem to be a lot of reactions ranging from like those golfers thought it was pretty cool.

Yeah.

And Gino, the neighbor, thought maybe this was something that people were a little more concerned about because of all the drones flying over New Jersey and stuff.

They just didn't know what they were.

So probably as with any new technology, a range of reactions.

All right.

Let's go inside.

I'm hot.

So one thing I noticed about the delivery is that these drones attract attention, right?

You know, I know you said it's quieter than the previous version, but it still makes a pretty noticeable sound if you're outside and nearby.

And they're visible and they fly through the air and they're somewhat novel.

And I'm curious if you think that's a good introduction introduction to the world of drone delivery for people or if you're trying to make these things a little less noticeable as they're making their way through neighborhoods dropping off packages.

I'm trying to make them safe.

Right.

That's what I'm trying to do.

It's not, you know, the morphology or the configuration.

Word of the day.

Word of the day.

The configuration of the drone needs to be the configuration of the drone that makes it safe and not a nuisance.

And

we all saw what we saw, right?

Like two golfers smiling, asking, intrigued.

Gino came in.

Gino was was buzzing, right?

Like he was, he was happy.

He was telling us stories, you know.

But he said the neighbors had had concerns about them because of these drones flying around.

So I just want to say that, not to say that everyone is concerned, but these things fly through the air.

They're, they're noticeable, um, and they do freak some people out.

Yeah, he said, he said they were wondering what was going on considering what was happening on the east coast, right?

Um, and so that's not that I wouldn't say Geno was concerned.

I mean, he didn't look concerned, he looked happy as a clam, but um, so

our job is to make this normal right that's that's our job and until it's normal people are always rightfully skeptical of change right and it's just a changing delivery um sequence but when you need something in 30 minutes you will very quickly become used to the fact that you can order from up to 60,000 items 70 000 items depending on the ssd and get it within 30 minutes right now the promise now is 60 minutes but there's no substitute for that it i mean it

it probably sounds somewhat dismissive to frame it this way but i'm wondering if maybe the main benefit to amazon of prime air is the marketing effect because if you're a customer and you do need something in a hurry and it comes whatever expense went into it for you for all the the turmoil of making that happen that person is probably going to think yeah i'm just going to use amazon for everything and it also strikes me that people do acclimate fairly quickly to new things i I mean, I remember when Waymos and other autonomous vehicles first started driving in the streets of San Francisco, you would stop in your tracks, people would point, people would stare, and then a couple months go by, you start seeing them more and more.

And now I barely notice the only people who stop and point are tourists because they've never seen them before.

And for people who live in San Francisco, they're just sort of part of the landscape.

So I can imagine something like that happening with drones too, but it does seem like we are just at the start of that process.

Yeah.

I mean, look,

you know, you know, for me, our job is not, we're not about the drone.

That's the thing.

That's the hardest thing to get people's head around.

We're about 30-minute click to delivery at scale, 500 million packages by the end of 2029.

If I do my job right, no one's going to care about the drone.

What they're going to care about is, did I get my package within 30 minutes?

And if you think about it like that, my job is not the drone guy, right?

Even though I've been known the drone on, but

my dad joke.

Honestly, I'm surprised that it wasn't one of us that made the joke first so congratulations

i was just crossing that off by two dad jokes here it got it got cut off the script at some point in another event i thought i should try it somewhere but honestly like my job is not to my job is to deliver packages within 30 minutes right and and and that's what i say my job is right the only way we know how to do that today is in the air

Can you give us any sense of what is coming in 2025?

Is there a number of cities that you're you're hoping to open up in, or what can you tell us?

Yeah, 2025,

you know, there's a bunch of announcements going to come out.

You know, we've got features coming on board.

We've got multi-product ordering, we've got basketballing, and then more locations coming next year that we'll talk a little bit about.

And we'll go international.

We've talked about Italy and the UK, but we want to expand beyond that once we get our Italian certification that opens up Europe.

So, you know, this isn't what I love about this stage of a development program,

I've been on quite a few in my career, is it's we're no longer going to do we're doing.

And that's, that's the, the joy of like when you can learn and see this sort of thing and you see people's reactions,

you feel like you're delivering something that's going to change the world, right?

Beats anything else on earth.

So Amazon delivers billions of packages a year.

Give us a sense of what

500 million packages would represent in terms of the overall volume of Amazon.

You know, it's in the single digit percentages of what we deliver, right?

And if you think about our plan, you know, 500 million packages a year to 100 million customers,

you know, from over 140 sites, you know, it'll be more or less that, varying degrees.

If you do the math on that, it's 4.5 packages per year per customer.

That's less than

single-digit percentages, one-hand percentages of what people order today in a year.

Does that represent a scaling back of the original vision here?

I mean, I'm not sure that Jeff Bezos attached specific predictions about package delivery back in 2013.

Maybe he did.

But my sense from watching the press that he did back then, the 60 Minutes interview and whatnot, is that he anticipated that this was sort of the next frontier in delivery and that this would, I don't know if it would eventually overtake ground delivery as the main way that people got Amazon packages, but certainly not a single digit percentage of Amazon deliveries was what he was sort of envisioning and projecting out.

So do you think that Amazon's ambitions in drone deliveries have been pared back?

No, they've grown from when I got here.

So I can say categorically, no.

And you got here in 2020.

And, you know, I wrote the product roadmap

to lay this out.

Right.

So

I don't think Jeff was wrong.

I think Jeff was right.

I mean, I think people like to look at when the announcement was made and how long it took, but no one looked at it.

We just saw it.

It just happened, right?

And,

you know, I feel like Ricky Bobby, it's real.

Did that just happen?

Yes, it did, right?

And if you think about it, you don't need everything in 30 minutes, right?

That's the point of what we're all talking about, right?

So it's this flip side debate where people are almost arguing against themselves, right?

Do you think there's a need for it?

Is there a need for it?

Is it big enough?

Is it not big enough?

It's going to be what it's going to be.

And the bottom line is

no one can ever tell me speed doesn't matter, right?

Now, when you're talking about an aerospace artifact, the number one item is safety.

And then the next thing is speed.

But I can count the last two weeks how many things I've ordered online.

And if I could have got all of them in 30 minutes, I would have taken it.

To me, utility and convenience is

what it's all about.

And if you think about this mode of transportation beyond package delivery and think about pharmacy

or think about

medical supplies,

it's going to come because it has utility.

Yeah.

Well, David, thank you so much.

David, I really feel like you delivered on this episode.

You really left a carbon footprint.

Well, you know what?

I'm glad you appreciate it because everybody else is trying to cancel carbon.

So, you know, I feel good about that.

Hey, guys, thanks for taking the time.

I know it's a long day out.

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A different future is closer than you think with Capella University.

Learn more at capella.edu

and one more thing before we go.

We wanted to send you off into the holidays this year with a little holiday cheer.

Well, Casey, it's time to don our gay apparel.

And that's the apparel I wear every day, but for you, it's a special occasion.

Yes, so if you're not watching us on YouTube, you won't see we have our holiday sweaters on.

Yours is like Santa riding on a unicorn with a sword.

Mine is a Darth Vader Mary Sithmus sweater.

And on the whole, I have to say, my apparel way gayer than yours.

It's true.

But now we also have Santa hats to add to the mix.

So I'm going to put these on under my headphones.

Okay.

How do we look?

Worse than usual.

Now, Casey, we've started an annual tradition here on the Hard Fork podcast of doing a tech-themed Christmas carol at the end of the year.

Mm-hmm.

Yes, we were inspired by Ezra Klein doing the same thing over on his show.

Now, I know you hate this part of our program, but I happen to love Christmas carols.

And I also love writing parody lyrics to Christmas songs.

And so this year,

we have written a new version of Hard Forkin Christmas, our song from last year.

Our hit song from last year.

Yes, dozens of people downloaded and listened to it and said that they loved it.

So we decided to go again.

You're looking at me like you absolutely hate this, like you'd rather be doing anything else.

You know, one of my fondest wishes as a boy would be that I had a beautiful singing voice, but that was not on my journey.

You actually do have a nice singing voice.

So that's really the difference.

It's not so much that I, you know, don't like to sing, it's that I feel self-conscious about my voice.

Oh, I see.

Well, maybe they can use auto-tune or some other kind of magic in the production process.

Prayers up to the engineers for what's about to happen.

Okay, here we go.

Let's sing the new version, 2024's edition of A Hard Fork and Christmas.

Before we do that, shouldn't we sort of offer some holiday wishes to our listeners?

Yes.

Yeah.

So I guess I would just wish that all of our listeners have a wonderful holiday.

We are very thankful that you listen to us each week and manually install hard fork on not just your phone, but all your friends and relatives' phones.

And generally just talk about hard fork constantly in every circumstance.

It means a lot to us.

We have so much fun making this show and it's so rewarding to know that people are out there listening.

And we just want to keep doing this again next year, and hopefully, we'll get the chance.

Yeah, fingers crossed.

Yeah.

Thanks, everybody.

Happy holidays.

Thank you.

And on that note, let's hear some musical notes.

On a hard forking Christmas, my true love gave to me some slop made by Chat GPT.

On a hard forking Christmas, my true true love gave to me

two Waymo rides and some slop made by ChatGPT

On a hard forking Christmas my true love gave to me

three vision pros, two Waymo rides and some slop made by Chat GPT

On a hard fork in Christmas my true love gave to me

four crypto coins three vision pros two Waymo rides and some slop made by ChatGPT.

We're doing great.

On a hard forking Christmas, my true love gave to me

five Aura rings for sleep tracking.

Four crypto coins, three vision pros, two Waymo rides, and some slop made by ChatGPT.

On a hard forking Christmas, my true love gave to me

six stupid tick tocks, five aura rings

Four crypto coins, three vision pros, two amorides, and some slop made by Chat GPT

On a hard fork in Christmas, my true love gave to me

Seven neon brat memes, six stupid tick tocks, five aura rings

Four crypto coins, three vision pros, two amorides, and some slob made by chat GPT

On a hard fork in Christmas, my true love gave to me

Eight scary deep fakes, seven neon brat memes, six stupid TikToks, five aura rings

Four crypto coins, three vision pros, two amorides, and some slob made by Chat GPT

On a hard fork Christmas, my true love gave to me

9 blue sky follows 8 scary deep fake seven neon brat memes 6 stupid tick tocks 5 aura rings

4 crypto coins 3 vision pros two amoris and some slaughter made by chat gpt

get it together

On a hard forkin' Christmas my true love gave to me

10 rocks for eating nine blue sky follows eight scary deep big seven neon brat memes six stupid tick tocks

five aura rings

four crypto coins three vision pros two waymo rides and some slop made by chat gpt

almost done

on a hard fork in christmas my true love gave to me

11 poly lovers ten rocks for eating nine blue sky follows eight scary deep fake, 7 neon brat memes, 6 stupid tick tocks, 5 aura rings,

4 crypto coins, 3 vision pros, 2 ammo rides, and some slop made by ChatGPT.

Last one.

On a hard forking Christmas, my true love gave to me

12 AR glasses, 11 poly lovers, 10 rocks for eating, 9 blue sky follows, 8 eight scary deep fakes, seven neon brat memes, six stupid tick tocks, five aura rings,

four crypto coins, three vision pros, two Waymo rides, and some slop made by ChatGPT.

Happy holidays, everybody

Hardfork is produced by Rachel Cohn and Whitney Jones.

We're edited by Jen Quion.

We're fact-checked by Caitlin Love.

Today's show was engineered by Alyssa Moxley.

Original music by Alicia BaYouTube, Mary Lozano, Diane Wong, Rowan Nemisto, and Dan Powell.

Our audience editor is Mel Galogli.

Video production by Ryan Manning and Chris Schott.

You can watch this whole episode, and you should, on YouTube at youtube.com slash hardfork.

Special thanks to Paula Schumann, Pui Wing Tam, Dahlia Haddad, and Jeffrey Miranda.

You can email us at hardfork at nytimes.com with your drone order.

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A different future is closer than you think with Capella University.

Learn more at capella.edu.