Great question. I'm not aware of any concrete reasons, but I suppose issues relating to these sorts of points:
- despite the sky being generally less constrained than ground delivery there are challenging obstructions, which are potentially far more risky than for ground travel: nudge past many ground obstructions you'd be okay, do the same in the sky, your drone is toast
- liability is far greater in the sky if your drone carrying something comes down in an uncontrolled manner (on someone or something)
- obstructions are likely to be high at the very points people are willing to come meet the drone (antennas, overhead power lines, washing lines, nets, etc) and they're often hard to spot
- unattended drop off is harder for drones in the places where customers are most dense (ie cities) upping the complexity further
- potential regulatory issues (but I understand below certain heights it's generally not regulated in many countries)
- bad PR from noisy drones!
- risks from non customers interfering
- challenges with carrying what you're dropping off: if it's heavy you need bigger drones; if it's light you'd be tying up a drone with something small, unless you can figure how to drop off multiple items, or you have a mixture of drone sizes
They all seem like they could plausibly be solved but I'm no drone engineer!
Maybe it could get going with targeting particular items that are strongly appealing to customers and might narrow the complexities due to being more uniform than a random Amazon basket. I believe an early use in Bhutan was for medical deliveries. Maybe something premium like ice-cream or cocktails might appeal with the right marketing?!
For small items, I sometimes get it delivered by an Amazon truck but a lot of the time it just comes from my USPS driver who is putting (mostly junk mail) in my inbox anyway.
Anything I get frozen gets sent in a relatively big box with dry ice or ice packs.
- despite the sky being generally less constrained than ground delivery there are challenging obstructions, which are potentially far more risky than for ground travel: nudge past many ground obstructions you'd be okay, do the same in the sky, your drone is toast
- liability is far greater in the sky if your drone carrying something comes down in an uncontrolled manner (on someone or something)
- obstructions are likely to be high at the very points people are willing to come meet the drone (antennas, overhead power lines, washing lines, nets, etc) and they're often hard to spot
- unattended drop off is harder for drones in the places where customers are most dense (ie cities) upping the complexity further
- potential regulatory issues (but I understand below certain heights it's generally not regulated in many countries)
- bad PR from noisy drones!
- risks from non customers interfering
- challenges with carrying what you're dropping off: if it's heavy you need bigger drones; if it's light you'd be tying up a drone with something small, unless you can figure how to drop off multiple items, or you have a mixture of drone sizes
They all seem like they could plausibly be solved but I'm no drone engineer!
Maybe it could get going with targeting particular items that are strongly appealing to customers and might narrow the complexities due to being more uniform than a random Amazon basket. I believe an early use in Bhutan was for medical deliveries. Maybe something premium like ice-cream or cocktails might appeal with the right marketing?!