Google’s drone delivery service will complete 100,000 deliveries this weekend and is growing rapidly with more deliveries in the first quarter of 2021 than in the year 2020 combined.
The largest residential delivery service owned by Google, operates in Queensland, Australia reported Forbes. The company proudly announced that the drone service delivered 10,000 cups of coffee, 2,700 sushi rolls, 1000 loaves of bread, and 1200 roasted chickens.
The delivery service is operated by Wing, after being launched in 2019, and is owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet. Wing uses a kind of hybrid drone/fixed wing aircraft that can fly at 45 meters, carrying small packages of 1.2 kilograms. The drone can deliver items in under 6 minutes within a 6 mile radius, and doesn’t need to land but can descend at 7 meters to drop packages.
Wing has high hopes that it will be able to deliver products to people all around the world without relying on logistic companies and delivery services. It has partnered with 30 companies globally, including local coffee shops and national brands like Walgreens. The previous year during the pandemic, the company collaborated with Virginia school to deliver library books to students. It was also the first drone delivery service to win an approval from the US Federal Aviation Administration to drop packages, in 2019.
Wing currently operates in the US, Australia and Finland, while the company has announced that it will launch the service in new cities with different partners in the next few months. UPS, Uber and Amazon have also launched their own drone delivery service as well. Amazon’s Prime Air received the FAA approval in 2020 to deliver packages beyond the visual of drone operator.
In an interview, Jonathan Bass, head of Wing’s Communications, stated that “it’s easy for a wide range of businesses to set up and use nearly anywhere at a fraction of the cost of ground delivery.” The new age will witness the immediate delivery of perishable items from ice-cream to coffee, in a matter of minutes, replacing delivery employee with drones.
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