E-commerce giant Amazon founder Jeff Bezos promised in an interview in 2013 that he will drop a batch of delivery drones in the air that can deliver packages within 30 minutes. He predicted at the time that drone deliveries would begin in the next five years or so.
Nearly a decade on, Amazon is still a long way from launching a drone delivery service, despite spending more than $2 billion to build a team of more than 1,000 people around the world.
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The survey, based on internal documents, government reports, and interviews with 13 current and former employees, found that the project was plagued by technical challenges, high employee turnover, and security concerns.
A serious crash last June prompted federal regulators to question the airworthiness of the drone after multiple safety features failed and the fuselage tilted out of control, sparking a bushfire.
While the test plane is expected to crash during the test flight, current and former employees say the pressure to get the program back on track has prompted some managers to take unnecessary risks that have resulted in injuries.
Moreover, Amazon plans to ramp up testing in the coming months. The company missed its goal of 2,500 test flights last year, but it has set a higher target of 12,000 for 2022, although fewer than 200 were completed by the end of February, documents show.
Now, it will be years before the Federal Aviation Administration approves commercial drone deliveries, though the agency allows companies to conduct test flights in increasingly populated areas as long as they don’t pose a significant safety risk.
But the prospect of replacing human drivers with flying robots is attractive to online retailers, as 30-minute delivery times are expected to become the norm for the delivery of certain items such as medicines, snacks, and baby products.
