10,000 Cups Of Coffee Have Been Delivered Via Drone

Delivery drone company Wing informs the community that they have almost achieved 100,000 customer deliveries. The milestone will coincide with the Alphabet-owned company’s second anniversary after their first launch in Australia.

10,000 cups of coffee, 1,200 roast chickens and 1,700 snack packs were consumed thanks to the drone services in Logan, Australia which is home to about 300,000 residents. The company also operates in Finland and the US, where they have made about 50,000 deliveries to date.

Users can download an app to make their purchase which includes an inventory of small items such as coffee, pet food and groceries. 

The current record held by the company, which is owned by Google parent company Alphabet, is two minutes and 47 seconds from order to arrival, with the average delivery taking around six to ten minutes. They are designed to carry packages with a weight up to 2.6 lbs with a total range of about six miles.

They fly at around 150 ft and descend to around 25 feet when they arrive at their drop off location, before tethering the package down and releasing it to the customer. Some parts of their success lie in their flexibility;  Wing’s drones can operate as both fixed-wing aircraft and in hover mode.

As of now the drones are set to work in the suburbs and low density urban areas. Wings intends to expand into medium sized cities like Florence, Italy, Manchester, UK and New Orleans, US.

Profitability is still a topic up for debate, as is how the model will be able to scale.

FMI: www.wing.com