Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
Transportation

Amazon's Drones Will Soon Deliver to Nearly 500 US Cities and Towns (theverge.com) 41

Posted by BeauHD from the air-drop dept.
Amazon says its Prime Air drone delivery service will expand sixfold to nearly 500 U.S. cities and towns by the end of 2026, including metro areas around Chicago, Syracuse, Cleveland, Atlanta, and Boise. According to Amazon Prime Air vice president David Carbon, the service has already delivered "hundreds of thousands of packages to customers" this year, typically within about an hour. The Verge reports: These will join 11 locations across the US where Amazon already offers drone deliveries, with each Prime Air site serving an area of approximately 175 square miles. The service aims to quickly deliver packages of up to 5 pounds or less [...]. Amazon reiterated its drone safety features alongside these expansion plans, including Prime Air's "industry-leading Detect-and-Avoid system." That's likely an attempt to minimize any concerns raised by the communities where the service is expanding, given these drones have already been scrutinized for crashing into cranes, internet cables, gardens, and an apartment building.

Amazon's Drones Will Soon Deliver to Nearly 500 US Cities and Towns More | Reply

Amazon's Drones Will Soon Deliver to Nearly 500 US Cities and Towns

Comments Filter:

  • Cities? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Wednesday August 19, 2026 @05:07PM (#66297358)

    I doubt it.

    When companies throw around terms like "cities and towns" for drone logistics, they are usually talking about sprawling suburban developments with neat, wide-open lawns, not dense urban cores.

    Even with this big rollout targeting nearly 500 communities, the operational reality dictates where these things can actually land:

    The Footprint Illusion:

    Amazon isn't building 500 new drone stations; they are counting every municipality touched by a regional network.

    A single facility covers a massive swath of territory (roughly 175 square miles), which inevitably zeroes in on the suburbs and outer rings of places like Atlanta, Chicago, and Dallas rather than downtown high-rises.

    The Landing Zone Problem: For a drone to safely drop a package (even a modest 5-pound shoebox-sized item), it needs a clear, unobstructed patch of ground free of overhead power lines, tight balconies, narrow alleyways, and inquisitive pets.

    Try finding a reliable 2-meter drop zone in a dense neighborhood.
    Not to mention it being a porch-pirate's wet dream.

    • Re:Cities? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Wednesday August 19, 2026 @05:32PM (#66297400) Homepage Journal

      When companies throw around terms like "cities and towns" for drone logistics, they are usually talking about sprawling suburban developments with neat, wide-open lawns, not dense urban cores.

      Well, yeah, but those are still cities. Almost twice as many people live in parts of cities that are not "dense urban cores".

      And the dense areas involve apartment complexes with hundreds or thousands of units and interior halls, so they're not delivering one package to the building; they're delivering a hundred. It wouldn't make sense to send drones for that.

      But if you can handle the suburban sprawl with drones, that's a huge logistics win, because that's where all the time is spent — not by somebody going to an urban-core building and dropping a hundred packages in the mail room, but by somebody going to a hundred individual houses and dropping off a hundred packages one at a time.

    • Not going to happen!!!

      Amazon is hoping to fly 80lb behemoths over populated areas to drop things from about 12 feet -- while all-too-often crashing into things. Of course to be fair, how could a drone possibly avoid an apartment building or a crane (twice). Last time it was a ladder strapped to the roof of a van.

      These things are not only dangerous but hugely uneconomic. Nothing beats a gig-worker on an ebike!

      • I am not sure why they have a design that "drops things". The Zipline drone stays 300+ feet above ground and reels the payload down in an aerodynamically stable pod as shown here: https://www.youtube.com/shorts... [youtube.com] I'm not sure if that idea is patented (I dont think it is, because at least one or two other companies are now doing it), if so, Amazon should license it.

    • So what? This is cool. As for porch pirates good luck to them .. remember when people thought it would be fun to tag Teslas? One guy got charged with terrorism and everyone wussed out. The same will happen to anyone who messes with these drones.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by smwny ( 874786 )
      How did this obvious AI slop get modded +4 insightful?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by RobinH ( 124750 )
      These are all the reasons those of us who live in suburbs give when we're asked why we don't live in the downtown core of cities.

    • Even with this big rollout targeting nearly 500 communities, the operational reality dictates where these things can actually land:

      This is America we're talking about. The first commandment has solved this: "I am Ford your car you will worship no other gods before me" has resulted in a metric fuckton of accessible widely sprawling asphalt. Just use one of the endless number of parking lots to drop your parcel.

      Also I don't think anyone read the summary, saw the term City and assumed it was the downtown apartments being discussed here. When someone does talk about that area they normally explicitly state it. For common language an Americ

  • If you build it, they will come...
  • Weâ(TM)re going to have a brand new source of aggressive noise pollution and another danger you have to watch out for while walking around. It wonâ(TM)t stop with Amazon drones, either. Police drone use will increase and, almost certainly, so will use by other bad actors, corporate or otherwise. Any government that has the power to stop this needs to be pressured to do so. It shouldnâ(TM)t become normalized.

    • Weâ(TM)re going to have a brand new source of aggressive noise pollution and another danger you have to watch out for while walking around. It wonâ(TM)t stop with Amazon drones, either. Police drone use will increase and, almost certainly, so will use by other bad actors, corporate or otherwise. Any government that has the power to stop this needs to be pressured to do so. It shouldnâ(TM)t become normalized.

      We passed the point of corporations and governments caring what people ask for somewhere over the last two decades. For a little while it was dressed up as, "We're doing this because it will make things better, even if you don't see it yet." Now it's just straight up, "TAKE IT, BITCH! TAKE IT AND THANK ME!"

      People don't matter. What people want matters even less than that. Profit first, greed above all, and the government serves the corporations, not the people.

  • cnbc also reporting (Score:3)

    by stabiesoft ( 733417 ) on Wednesday August 19, 2026 @05:17PM (#66297382) Homepage
    the same but what caught my eye was "will make 1 million drone deliveries this year." https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/1... [cnbc.com] Well that sounds great, except even at 10 bucks/delivery that is only 10M/year. Which seems pretty low for a project that has cost this much. And is 1M deliveries even a blip on their daily deliveries? I could believe they deliver 10M pkgs per day and this is 1M pkgs per year.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by taustin ( 171655 )

      I could believe they deliver 10M pkgs per day and this is 1M pkgs per year.

      The estimate is that they deliver twice that per day.

      • JFC, unbelievable. I guess there is a reason they have all those fulfillment centers. 2M/day. Close to 1B annually. Like I said, 1M/annual is less than rounding error for the drone arm.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by taustin ( 171655 )

          So far. Maybe they're still assessing the practicality of it, but mainly, they're refining the technology before trying to upscale. (And that's not 2M/day, that's 20M per day.)

    • It has to start some how. First year they will learn a lot and apply it to next year. So 1 million the first year, 10 the next, and 100 the following.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by SumDog ( 466607 )
      Amazon's total retail revenue is 1%~2% a year. They literally make nearly nothing off retail. The majority of their business is AWS (and most Americans outside tech aren't even aware Amazon is one of the three largest data center companies in the world next to Microsoft Azure and Google's GCP). They don't actually need to make ANY money. They just need to not lose too much. (Amazon's retail revenue fell to -2% the year they invested in Rivian out of that division).

    • Wait until you hear that there was only an anticipated market for 5 computers globally. Yeah numbers are always stable, and there's no expectation that anything will grow. /s

      Judging a project's success based on it's very early scale out it silly. No one invested this money planning to stop at 1million drone deliveries / year.

  • Air density and wind (Score:3)

    by michael_cain ( 66650 ) on Wednesday August 19, 2026 @06:02PM (#66297438) Journal
    I live along the Colorado Front Range. The Goodyear blimps don't fly here because of the elevation (reduces lift) and number of wind events with gusts to 60 mph. I will be curious to see if drone delivery is practical.

    • Drones are really good at handling gusts. No other kind of active aircraft comes close. A bigger problem is market size

      • I'd guess that Denver and Colorado Springs, two cities on the Front Range, are plenty big enough markets to make this attractive to Amazon.

    • Blimps and drones are two very VERY different beasts. One of them is highly subject to winds, and slow moving with high inertia taking a long time to react to any external change in force.

      The other is small, zippy, and can hold insanely steady with rapidly changing conditions.

      Also these drones will be local launched, they aren't flying long distances high in the sky and won't be subject to the same winds as aircraft or blimps. The bigger question is one of landing areas.

  • I look forward to the free maker parts falling from the skies.

  • The service aims to quickly deliver packages of up to 5 pounds or less ...

    Always order at least 6 pounds of stuff.

    I wonder if they'll use these in places with military air bases. I'm a few miles from a Navy master jet base, with an Air Force base a bit farther away, and I doubt they'd be thrilled at having to track these things.

  • I live in a no fly zone corridor near a bombing range. No RC planes, No kites above 50ft, No personal flyers of any kind. What I do get is sonic booms and bombing runs but that's entertainment.

  • The other day, I was riding my bike along a street in Tokyo, when I heard a sound. I turned around, and noticed a small delivery robot. It wasn't Amazon - It was Rakuten, but it was one of those robots which deliver small parcels. It was trundling along the street. But then I noticed that it was approaching a robot colleague. The sound I heard appeared to be some sort of greeting, or request for attention. They stopped at the crossing, facing each other. I briefly recalled that scene in Ex Machina (2014), w

  • Diverse hazards (Score:3)

    by dsgrntlxmply ( 610492 ) on Wednesday August 19, 2026 @11:30PM (#66297782)
    I happen to live across the road from a 115 kV power line, large trees, and the battlefields of inter- and intra- species crow wars. These crows have a very particular set of skills.

    • These crows have a very particular set of skills.

      There are videos of birds attacking drones, and while not exactly common, it certain does happen. I would be surprised if Amazon has not worked with ornithologists (I would guess even have a few on staff) to learn how to minimize such attacks.

      • Come to think of it, it'd be one thing to avoid prey profiles for raptors, but corvids learning they carry interesting things would be a losing proposition over time. Maybe so long as they never get used for food they'll do ok.
  • Based on employee treatment and shitty delivery service, now folks have a better reason to shop elsewhere. There wont be a back up plan for unreceived/misdelivered packages. How does a drone account for high wind, parcel boxes, enclosed porches, or other obstacles? They cant and all that money they think theyre saving will go to replacement products, lost drones, and lawsuits from anyone being recorded, injured, or causing property damage in one form or another.
  • my neighbor has goats and if a drone drops a package where they can access it, it becomes goat food...
  • If you consider that the drone deliveries will all be within a specific radius of the local Amazon warehouses, then it's only going to be a 7.5 mile radius to cover 175 square miles. That might cover, say, two suburbs in every direction surrounding Chicago. Let's say that covers 10 suburbs in total; what about deliveries to the other 275 suburbs?

Slashdot Top Deals

The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch someone else doing it wrong, without commenting. -- T.H. White

Close