Is Amazon's Drone Delivery Finally Ready for Prime Time?

We flew to Arizona to test the recently debuted service ourselves.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Dell Technologies. It's time to put AI to work. Is your business ready? The challenge isn't getting started with AI. It's scaling beyond pilots while maintaining control of your data, governance, infrastructure, and costs. Dell AI Factory provides the integrated foundation you need to scale AI securely and efficiently with one trusted partner, Dell, AI on your terms. From idea to impact. Learn more at dell.com/yourwaytoAI. That's dell.com/yourwaytoAI.

• 0:38Casey Newton?

  Right.

• 0:41Casey Newton?

  Well, here we go, Kevin.

• 0:45Kevin Roose?

  Casey, where are we?

• 0:46Casey Newton?

  We are here in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona, in a part of town that is known as by the airport.

• 0:54Casey Newton?

  And it's got a lot of really amazing things, such as a Marriott and some office buildings. You know, believe it or not, Kevin, a younger version of me lived just a few miles away.

• 1:09Kevin Roose?

  You were in Arizona.

• 1:10Casey Newton?

  I was sort of cutting my teeth, as they say, practicing the trade of journalism at the Arizona Republic. And then after I did it for six and a half years, I was allowed to leave. And so I did.

• 1:24Kevin Roose?

  I also feel like Phoenix has become like the kind of like testing ground for a lot of our great technology companies, you know, like Waymos are now, they were in Phoenix before, they were in a lot of places. These drones we're about to see are here, because it's like, it has good weather year round.

• 1:42Casey Newton?

  It's hot and dry.

• 1:43Kevin Roose?

  Hot and dry.

• 1:44Casey Newton?

  Which turns out to be a good recipe for testing new technology.

• 1:46Kevin Roose?

  Exactly. And, you know, maybe they're a little more loose about stuff like regulation.

• 1:51Casey Newton?

  Oh, no, they are a lot more loose about regulation. I knew it was time to leave Phoenix when I went into a coffee shop and I went in to order coffee and there was just a guy sitting like reading with his gun on the table. And I thought, there's no call for that, sir. There's, we're not, no one is like, I.

• 2:10Kevin Roose?

  He just, he really said, if you touch my Java.

• 2:14Casey Newton?

  Yeah, he really said, don't talk to me before I have my coffee.

• 2:22Kevin Roose?

  I'm Kevin Roose, a tech columnist at The New York Times.

• 2:24Casey Newton?

  I'm Casey Noon from Platform.

• 2:26Kevin Roose?

  And this is Hard Fork.

• 2:27Casey Newton?

  This week, we're in Arizona to test out Amazon Prime Air, the company's initiative to deliver items to your door in 60 minutes or less. You're flying drones.

• 2:49Kevin Roose?

  All right, Casey, we are here in Phoenix. What are we doing here?

• 2:54Casey Newton?

  Well, today, we have been invited to sample Amazon's latest and possibly craziest way of getting goods to customers: drones. And the idea of using drones to deliver packages in the air is not a new one. Amazon first released at least the concept of a drone delivery program more than a decade ago. And since then, the company has tested drone delivery service in Lockford, California, and they also offer a version of it in College Station, Texas. But this new program here in the West Valley, Phoenix metro area of Arizona, is the next major step for Amazon to prove that this service can work at scale. So the company invited us to check it out. We said yes. And then all hell broke loose on East Coast,

• 3:35Casey Newton?

  as seemingly everyone who looked out the window in New Jersey saw a swarm of drones.

• 3:40Kevin Roose?

  Yes, and we won't spoil it, but let's just say we got to the bottom of whether these drones belong to Amazon or not.

• 3:47Casey Newton?

  Yeah, we got a conclusive answer on that one.

• 3:50Kevin Roose?

  And we also learned a lot more about Amazon's drone program, their aspirations for it, why it's taking so long to get these things up into the sky. And we actually got to see a delivery ourselves.

• 4:02Casey Newton?

  Yeah, and I mean, look, if you're listening to this and you have concerns about a bunch of drones becoming the default way that Amazon delivers goods, so do we. This was one of the reasons why we wanted to actually come down to the facility, talk to the people who run it, because that's not obviously a good idea to us. And so we wanted to put some of those questions to them. At the same time, I will admit, it is cool to watch things fly and take off and land. And that is another reason why we wanted to do this.

• 4:26Kevin Roose?

  Yes, so let's go over to the Amazon facility and see how these things are delivering packages.

• 4:41Kevin Roose?

  All right, so we are here at an Amazon facility. This is S A Z two outside of Phoenix. And we're here with David Carman. He is the Vice President and General Manager of Amazon Prime Air. Did I get your title correct?

• 4:54Speaker 03

  You did. You're one of the first. Thank you.

• 4:55Kevin Roose?

  Okay. And we're going to see their new drone operation. And we're in the middle of this facility, which is huge, but apparently very small by Amazon standards, where things are moving around and being packed and shipped off to people maybe for the holidays. Casey, you look great in your safety vest.

• 5:13Casey Newton?

  Thank you. Thank you. As do you. As do all of us, really. Yeah. Well, let's hear more.

• 5:19Kevin Roose?

  Let's go see some stuff.

• 5:20Casey Newton?

  How it works. Yeah.

• 5:21Kevin Roose?

  Now, the part of the facility that handles the drone deliveries, do you call that the drone zone?

• 5:26Speaker 03

  This is very good. We should have, had we thought about it. But no, we call it the paddock. Prime Air Drone Delivery Center.

• 5:32Kevin Roose?

  Okay.

• 5:33Speaker 03

  And that's at the other end of this facility.

• 5:35Kevin Roose?

  Well, that's not as catchy as the drone zone. So if you want to take that name, it's free. I'll give it to you without a royalty.

• 5:40Speaker 03

  It's not. It's not as catchy. We're too far into it now to change it. So we're sticking with paddock.

• 5:46Kevin Roose?

  Well, call me next time when you're naming something.

• 5:48Speaker 03

  I will. I will. It is very good.

• 5:50Kevin Roose?

  Okay. All right. So you're doing these drone deliveries now, but you're processing them out of a facility that also processes deliveries that go out on vans, the traditional way. When an order comes in that's going to be sent to a customer on a drone, does it go through the same process up until the very end? Or does it sort of get, you know, put off into a separate process as soon as the thing comes into the warehouse?

• 6:14Speaker 03

  It pretty well follows the same process till the point that it becomes a Prime Air package. And we'll walk you through that. But the only difference when we get to the end is rather than them puts your order into a bag or into an envelope, they put it into a Prime Air box, which we use to put inside the drone. And the drone then delivers to the house, which you folks will see tonight.

• 6:38Kevin Roose?

  Cool. All right, let's take the tour.

• 6:39Speaker 03

  Okay. These are picking stations.

• 6:43Kevin Roose?

  So we're looking at some, uh, some employees sort of picking and packing.

• 6:48Speaker 03

  These are the packers that are right here, right?

• 6:51Kevin Roose?

  Um, they're putting it onto a conveyor belt, the conveyor belt's taking it up and away. So this is the special drone box.

• 6:59Speaker 03

  This is a special drone box.

• 7:00Casey Newton?

  To the naked eye, it looks like an ordinary box.

• 7:03Speaker 03

  It's got a hidden, hidden floor, right? So you'd think there's probably about, you know.

• 7:07Kevin Roose?

  Oh, so it's got some padding in there.

• 7:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, so that, that basically acts what we call as a trampoline. Right, it's got some given.

• 7:13Kevin Roose?

  And every delivery goes in this box, whether it's a tube of toothpaste or something that might take up the whole box.

• 7:19Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 7:20Kevin Roose?

  So here's a, a order, it's just come in and it's going into one of the special drone boxes.

• 7:26Speaker 03

  That has the, the cushion at the bottom.

• 7:27Kevin Roose?

  Yes.

• 7:30Speaker 03

  So his item, his item was picked from behind. He's now gonna pack it.

• 7:37Kevin Roose?

  This is like a super small item that's going into a fairly large box.

• 7:40Speaker 03

  That's why I'd like to go and ship in our own container.

• 7:43Kevin Roose?

  It looked like it might have been like a tube of lipstick or something, I couldn't tell, but it was like.

• 7:47Speaker 03

  It's probably a gift card, I think.

• 7:48Kevin Roose?

  Oh, it was a gift card?

• 7:49Speaker 03

  I could be wrong, but, could be. So now what happens is the package goes to a, what we call a water spider.

• 7:55Kevin Roose?

  A water spider?

• 7:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, water spider is manufacturing operations term for somebody that takes a package from one point to the next. So what we're gonna do, we're gonna walk the package down the path it would take to get to the paddock. So we shouldn't dilly-dally, because somebody's waiting.

• 8:10Kevin Roose?

  Yeah, let's go, let's go people.

• 8:16Kevin Roose?

  Okay, so we are here at the paddock. Uh, David, what happens when a box gets out of the warehouse and comes over to this facility?

• 8:25Speaker 03

  This is the official handover, there should be music when this happens. This is the official handover from the sub same day centre. That's now, um, a package given to the drone airport. And then they'll put it in the drone and send it on its way.

• 8:41Kevin Roose?

  So these are the new version of the Amazon drones. These are the MK30s, right?

• 8:46Speaker 03

  MK30 Block 10.

• 8:48Kevin Roose?

  They're larger than I thought they were. They're like the size of like, you know, a Labrador Retriever or something.

• 8:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, I've never heard them described as that.

• 8:57Kevin Roose?

  Maybe a little bigger, I don't know.

• 8:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, for the listeners, it's probably about the size of a Labrador. But if you think about it, it's probably three and a half feet as fuselage. And everything else is control surface. So an upper and a lower control wing and then six motors around it. The front part is systems, like cameras, forward facing, two on the outside, two looking down. And then you've got your battery on the top, you've got your computer underneath. And everything else is empty space for a package.

• 9:25Kevin Roose?

  Yeah, let's go see a takeoff. I want to see this Labrador go.

• 9:29Speaker 03

  So now, guys, stay within the green line.

• 9:32Kevin Roose?

  Stay within the green line, no funny business. So we're seeing one of these big MK30 drones. It's like on the sort of like launch pad. It's got a, we're in sort of, you know, a section of a parking lot that's been sort of fenced off.

• 9:47Casey Newton?

  This is the airport, we're in the airport.

• 9:49Kevin Roose?

  We're in the airport, yes, and we are watching.

• 9:51Speaker 03

  It's a federally regulated airport, essentially.

• 9:56Kevin Roose?

  And yeah, it's sort of pointed upright and it's gonna take off vertically.

• 10:01Casey Newton?

  It's blue and white, it has an Amazon logo on the tail. If you were picturing like a drone like you would get your child for Christmas, this is not that. It is much larger.

• 10:15Kevin Roose?

  Yeah, this, how much do these things weigh?

• 10:18Speaker 03

  Eighty pounds, just under eighty pounds.

• 10:21Casey Newton?

  Like a Labrador?

• 10:22Kevin Roose?

  Yeah, a Labrador is about eighty pounds, yeah.

• 10:28Speaker 03

  So now we're hot, right, so watch this.

• 10:30Kevin Roose?

  Okay.

• 10:30Speaker 03

  It'll run through a sequence now, you'll see those motors spin.

• 10:34Kevin Roose?

  Okay, it's powering up.

• 10:35Speaker 03

  It says I'm good. Motors have just lightly spun, now they spin.

• 10:41Kevin Roose?

  Ten, nine, eight, seven, six.

• 10:45Speaker 03

  Checked each motor profile.

• 10:46Kevin Roose?

  Four, three, two, one. Bye, little gift card.

• 10:57Kevin Roose?

  Have a good trip.

• 11:00Speaker 03

  So if you think about it, um, you only hear it for about a minute at either end. And then it's gone.

• 11:08Kevin Roose?

  Yeah, it's like a temporary, very loud swarm of bees.

• 11:11Speaker 03

  Well, it's not very loud.

• 11:13Kevin Roose?

  Wow.

• 11:13Speaker 03

  It's not very loud at all.

• 11:14Kevin Roose?

  If I'm taking a nap and one of these things flies over me.

• 11:17Speaker 03

  You won't hear it inside.

• 11:18Kevin Roose?

  You don't think?

• 11:19Speaker 03

  No way.

• 11:19Kevin Roose?

  But if I'm out on the hammock, I'm waking up.

• 11:21Speaker 03

  The hammock. If you've got the benefit of having a hammock, right? But you can't hear that. You can see it, you can't hear it.

• 11:27Kevin Roose?

  Yeah. Yeah, now I can't. What is the range of these things? How far away can they go?

• 11:32Speaker 03

  Eleven kilometers, twelve kilometers ultimately.

• 11:34Kevin Roose?

  I'm American, you're gonna have to put that in miles.

• 11:38Speaker 03

  What about like eight miles?

• 11:40Kevin Roose?

  Yeah.

• 11:40Speaker 03

  Eight miles.

• 11:41Kevin Roose?

  Have you ever lost one?

• 11:43Speaker 03

  No.

• 11:43Kevin Roose?

  Did it just come back?

• 11:45Speaker 03

  No, well, we treat them well, put them on power, they've got no reason not to come back. And so we have two launch pads, three landing pads, so we can de-conflict and cycle.

• 11:56Kevin Roose?

  I see. Oh, yeah, this is one coming back.

• 11:59Speaker 03

  This is one coming back. So, um, we can run both these pads at the same time. Um, but so what the drone's doing is stopping, it's checking, um, in its conformance volume that, um, nothing is obscuring its path and it's clear to land and it'll come down and it'll land on the pad.

• 12:20Speaker 03

  Fully redundant safety system, so there's no single points of safety critical failure.

• 12:25Kevin Roose?

  Is an operator landiness or it is?

• 12:27Speaker 03

  No, it's almost.

• 12:33Kevin Roose?

  Now, I have to say, it's quite loud when it's coming down and taking off.

• 12:38Speaker 03

  I have to disagree.

• 12:41Kevin Roose?

  Yeah, I mean, that just seems like, uh, if that's flying through your neighborhood, you're gonna notice.

• 12:46Speaker 03

  Uh, let's take it where we're going today. Where you'll have general aviation helicopters, Cessnas and golf carts. And then, and then let's revisit your idea of that.

• 12:55Kevin Roose?

  Okay, okay.

• 12:56Speaker 03

  Um, cause I think this thing's forty percent quieter than the previous drone. And we're in the seventies from despel rating. And if you listen to the, the acoustics of the drone, it's pretty. Soothing, right? If you think about noise, like a buzz, a mosquito buzzing is a pain, right? But that doesn't mean decibels are high, right? It's the type of sound, right? So we work really hard on the type of sound of the drone to bring it into modulation that people can actually appreciate rather than think.

• 13:33Casey Newton?

  Maybe you should put some like Christmas music on the things, like have them like sing a little.

• 13:38Speaker 03

  That would cause you, that would cause you to come out of your affluent hammock.

• 13:42Casey Newton?

  Wicked soundtrack, people, people love wicked. You could just play the wicked soundtrack.

• 13:46Speaker 03

  My wife fortunately just went and watched it without me, so I feel very good. I'm not a musical guy, but um, like to put in perspective your idea of it's loud. We're about what 12 feet away from where it's taking off.

• 13:58Casey Newton?

  Yeah, I mean, if I were next, if I were this close to a normal plane, I would have to be wearing air protection.

• 14:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 14:03Casey Newton?

  Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, if, if one or two of these landed in your neighborhood during the day, I don't think you would really notice or mind. I think if this becomes the dominant way that people get their Amazon deliveries, it might be more efficient.

• 14:15Speaker 03

  It'll never be the dominant way.

• 14:16Casey Newton?

  No.

• 14:17Speaker 03

  No, no way. And ultimately, we'll never do much more than 10% or people are going to order anyway because of what we can take. This is just another option to get people what they need really quickly.

• 14:32Casey Newton?

  Uh, well, David, thank you for the tour of your, what do you call this? The, the launch pad?

• 14:35Speaker 03

  Paddock.

• 14:35Casey Newton?

  Paddock.

• 14:36Speaker 03

  Paddock, yeah.

• 14:37Casey Newton?

  And not to be confused with haddock, which is a type of fish.

• 14:40Speaker 03

  No, it's not a haddock, it's not a fish.

• 14:41Casey Newton?

  But you can order haddock through Prime Air if you go to the right place, I think. I haven't checked that.

• 14:46Speaker 03

  I'm pretty sure we don't.

• 14:47Casey Newton?

  No, no groceries yet?

• 14:48Speaker 03

  We're not dropping fish from the sky.

• 14:49Casey Newton?

  Stay tuned for maybe a future announcement.

• 14:51Speaker 03

  That'd be messy as well.

• 14:52Casey Newton?

  That'd be messy. But now we get to go do a drone order of our own.

• 14:57Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 14:57Casey Newton?

  Is that right?

• 14:58Speaker 03

  Yep, we're going to go to a local property.

• 15:00Casey Newton?

  Yep.

• 15:01Speaker 03

  And, and we're going to order, and, and seeing is believing, right? This is, this is the key. When you go to someone's house and you see what a, a regular backyard looks like or a regular front yard, because we're delivering to empty space, you see the dynamic nature of an environment and that's when you really see the genius. Like this, at the end of the day, is a choreographed paddock, right? This is the way it's meant to run. When you see what's happening in someone's house, that's cool.

• 15:25Casey Newton?

  Yes. Cool.

• 15:27Kevin Roose?

  Let's go see that when we come back.

• 15:50Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Dell Technologies. It's time to put AI to work. Is your business ready? The challenge isn't getting started with AI. It's scaling beyond pilots while maintaining control of your data, governance, infrastructure, and costs. Dell AI Factory provides the integrated foundation you need to scale AI securely and efficiently with one trusted partner, Dell, AI on your terms. From idea to impact. Learn more at dell.com/yourwaytoAI. That's dell.com/yourwaytoAI.

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• 17:34Casey Newton?

  All right. So after our tour of the Amazon facility, Kevin and I, along with our producers Rachel and Ryan, drove about 12 minutes to a nearby house that Amazon had rented to test drone deliveries. The house was in a suburban neighborhood, lots of neatly laid out homes with similar sized front and backyards, had a pool, and it jutted up against a golf course, which wound up being kind of funny. So we sat down at a table there with David, who, as a reminder, oversees all aspects of the Prime Air program, not just here in Arizona, but all over the world.

• 18:11Kevin Roose?

  I would like to try placing an order with Prime Air and seeing it come to this place where we are. We're in like a rented house in the suburbs of Phoenix. Can we place an order and then it'll come?

• 18:23Casey Newton?

  Let's place an order.

• 18:24Kevin Roose?

  Okay. So Casey, I went through the product list. So you all have like something like, how many different types of items can be delivered by drone today? Around 60,000. 60,000. Okay. So I didn't go through all 60,000, but I did pick a few out of the list that I wanted to get your take on.

• 18:38Casey Newton?

  Yeah, some gems.

• 18:39Kevin Roose?

  Some gems. So some of the items that we can order in an hour or less are a cheese grater, a copy of the children's book, Good Night, Good Night, construction site. That was potentially for my kid. I know he would love that. There's something called Brazilian bum bum cream that we can order.

• 18:57Casey Newton?

  That's for two bums at the same time?

• 18:58Kevin Roose?

  Exactly. A copy of the US Constitution.

• 19:02Casey Newton?

  Every house needs one.

• 19:03Kevin Roose?

  Or dental floss. I do actually have something stuck in my teeth right now.

• 19:05Casey Newton?

  I didn't want to bring it up, actually. Yeah.

• 19:08Kevin Roose?

  So which of those sounds best to you?

• 19:10Casey Newton?

  I mean, I think, to me, it's somewhere between the bum bum cream and the US Constitution. Where are you leaning?

• 19:17Kevin Roose?

  I think we should get the bum bum cream, just because I don't even know what that is.

• 19:20Casey Newton?

  I don't know what it is either.

• 19:21Kevin Roose?

  You ditched your child very quickly.

• 19:24Casey Newton?

  He's got enough books.

• 19:24Kevin Roose?

  The holidays are coming up. He's going to be getting enough stuff. Okay. So we can get, yeah, Brazilian bum bum cream by Sol de Janeiro. It's visibly firming cream. I don't know.

• 19:35Casey Newton?

  It will firm us?

• 19:36Kevin Roose?

  It will firm us. Took a very dark turn very quickly. Well, you sell it, so.

• 19:43Speaker 03

  You're buying it.

• 19:44Casey Newton?

  We're just, we're just perusing the.

• 19:46Kevin Roose?

  Okay, so now I go to the cart and I go to checkout and.

• 19:49Casey Newton?

  And just so people know, how much is the bum bum cream?

• 19:51Kevin Roose?

  It's $24.

• 19:52Casey Newton?

  Okay, all right. What are they putting in that cream?

• 19:55Kevin Roose?

  So the drone delivery, it says for one item is $9.99. That's like, that's just a charge that you tack on. Okay, so I'm gonna say within, oh, and then it wants me to confirm. It shows me like a little satellite picture here of the house.

• 20:08Casey Newton?

  So it's basically, it's making sure that you know where in your house it's gonna drop.

• 20:12Kevin Roose?

  Yeah, so this is gonna drop off in the backyard by the pool. And it says, a selected area must be kept clear of people, pets and objects. So I will continue, I will use this delivery area.

• 20:25Casey Newton?

  Oh, so that's it, so if you had a dog, you'd wanna bring the dog inside while you were getting the delivery?

• 20:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, you wanna get it out of the way of the delivery area. But what you're doing now happens the first time.

• 20:35Casey Newton?

  I see.

• 20:35Speaker 03

  Like you would any other order. So it's the first time you're doing it, when you do it, if we order the next package, which presumably will be the constitution.

• 20:44Casey Newton?

  That's right.

• 20:45Speaker 03

  Which is very patriotic of us, so that's the right thing to do. And you wouldn't have to go through this again unless you wanted to change that delivery location, of which, in some properties, you'll get up to three choices. In this, it's pretty tight outside. It's a tight environment with the pool and the shrubs and the golf course behind us and that sort of stuff.

• 21:03Casey Newton?

  Do you always try to deliver in the backyard or do you do the front yard as well?

• 21:07Speaker 03

  We don't care.

• 21:08Casey Newton?

  Okay.

• 21:08Speaker 03

  As long as it's got the available space, we'll deliver it.

• 21:11Casey Newton?

  Got it.

• 21:12Kevin Roose?

  Okay, so it's, it looks like a pretty standard Amazon checkout process, except for this sort of delivery area thing. And then I'm gonna go ahead and place that order. And then it says by 2:16 PM today, which is in exactly one hour, we are predicted to get a delivery by drone. So while we wait for our drone delivery to show up, David, we do have some more questions for you. I wanna start by asking about different drones, the ones that are currently flying over New Jersey. People are very upset about this. There's a lot of people who are going outside and taking photos of them and posting them on social media. This has become like a big national news story. Are those your drones? Are those Amazon drones?

• 21:54Speaker 03

  They are absolutely not Amazon drones.

• 21:56Kevin Roose?

  All right.

• 21:57Speaker 03

  Period.

• 21:57Kevin Roose?

  Okay.

• 21:58Casey Newton?

  We can rule that one out. We've moved that story forward, Kevin.

• 22:00Kevin Roose?

  Yes.

• 22:01Speaker 03

  Yeah. So. Cutting-edge journalism.

• 22:02Casey Newton?

  Yeah.

• 22:03Speaker 03

  Not us.

• 22:04Kevin Roose?

  But I do want to ask you about this, not because I think you have any, you know, special knowledge or insight about these particular drones, but because I think it's the reaction that people are having. I'm wondering if you watch that as someone who wants to take commercial delivery drones mainstream and says, oh, this might actually be challenging. People's reaction when they see drones flying above them in the sky, at least if people in New Jersey are typical, is not, oh, this is great. Let's invite them to come to our neighborhood. It's get this thing out of my face. Get this thing out of the sky.

• 22:36Speaker 03

  People don't like nuisance.

• 22:37Kevin Roose?

  Yeah.

• 22:38Speaker 03

  Right? So we would have the same reaction. There was like 500 motorcycles at the front of your house. You'd have the same reaction. And so, you know, we've been purposeful about integrating into airspace, integrating into aerospace fundamentals in order that we're like everybody else that legitimately flies or legitimately does commercial delivery or legitimately moves a passenger or a package. And that's the key. It's, you know, none of us want to be messed around with at our house. Right? And particularly when you have no control over it. And so, you know, whoever's doing it, stop it. And, you know, like aerospace regulation is, it's the law.

• 23:21Kevin Roose?

  Yeah. But I guess the question I have is like, people from a distance of a couple of hundred feet up in the sky, you can't tell if some, a drone is up there delivering packages or if it's part of some, you know, surveillance operation. It's, it seems like it's scary to people. So how do you change the culture where when people see something flying in the air above them, their first thought is not, oh, no, I'm under attack. It's, oh, here's my Amazon package.

• 23:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. I don't know that I would categorize as people's first thought when they see something in the air, I'm under attack. Not in this country at least.

• 23:52Kevin Roose?

  I mean, I heard people on the news talking about wanting to shoot these things out of the air.

• 23:56Speaker 03

  They're New Yorkers, so.

• 23:59Speaker 03

  Look, I grew up under a flight. I'm probably the wrong guy to ask. You know, my dad worked for Qantas. I worked, you know, I've been involved with aviation or been exposed to it all my life. I grew up under a flight path about five miles from an airport. So to me, seeing things in the sky is still, holy cow, how does something like that fly? People don't want to be bothered. And if they're bothered, they're upset. And if they're upset, they're vocal. And, and our job in the commercial drone delivery industry is not to be a nuisance.

• 24:30Kevin Roose?

  So let's go back in time to 2013, when Jeff Bezos originally unveiled the vision

• 24:37Speaker 03

  My favorite question.

• 24:38Kevin Roose?

  of Prime Air. He did a big segment on 60 Minutes and he framed this as a huge disruption that was coming to the world of package delivery. And I took him to be saying essentially that we have to build this because someone's going to build this and customers want fast delivery and we're going to be the ones to give it to them. Is that still the vision for Prime Air today?

• 24:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, our mission is to deliver a delivery capability that's capable of delivering 500 million packages a year within 30 minutes of order. That's our job. And the one thing we know is people are never going to compromise safety for speed, right? If I said to you, you know, something bad is going to happen, but I'll get you your package in 10 minutes, you're never going to order, right? So we've got this bar for safety that is an aerospace bar for safety that's assessed by the FAA. And then as delivery experience gets faster, people will shop more, right? So to me, it's an imperative. If you're going to be in e-commerce, you have to be able to get people things fast. And that's what we're here to solve in these particular types of environments.

• 25:40Casey Newton?

  So Kevin just brought up 2013, the vision is announced. I know you guys have been doing a lot since then, but I still cannot use one of these things to get a delivery at my house in San Francisco. So what's been taking so long?

• 25:54Speaker 03

  It's really hard. It's like,

• 25:58Speaker 03

  This is not about can a drone fly, right? Wright Brothers proved things can fly. It's not about can a drone carry something. It really is about developing a technology suite to deliver packages at scale where people live around the world. And to do that, you have to fundamentally start with what's the safety target you have to have. And for us, that is magnitude safer than general aviation and a magnitude safer than driving to the store. And that's what we're designing up into. On top of that, you know, Amazon's been going for, you know, 30 years, right? So you have to integrate into an existing Amazon stack that has been able to take orders.

• 26:41Speaker 03

  Firstly, it was, you know, a couple of days, then it was one day, then it was sub same day in a big fulfillment network. And really, if you think about what we have to do, the fastest we normally can do anything is two hours. We have to get that package from the point of click to us at the drone fulfillment center or the paddock within 15 minutes. Right, that some of these facilities, you can't walk from one end to the other in 15 minutes.

• 27:08Kevin Roose?

  So let's talk about regulatory hurdles because my understanding is that's a big piece of why this has taken so long to get these things up and running. What has been the hardest thing to get the FAA to sign off on within the US?

• 27:23Speaker 03

  Regulation isn't the holdup. The reality is nobody was really ready to go and execute deliveries at any form of scale in open airspace that wasn't over paddocks and fields where no one lived anyway, regardless of the FAA. And I think the industry needs to own up to that. I mean, they spent a lot of time lobbying for ignoring standards or aerospace conventions. And certainly from the minute I walked in at least, and I know this was Amazon's position anyway, we were advocating that there needed to be a policy framework. There needed to be a regulatory framework and it needed to be steeped in aerospace practice.

• 28:03Kevin Roose?

  But you do need specific licenses and approvals like to operate a drone. Outside of the what's called the line of sight. That takes a special kind of certification. So there were hoops that you had to jump through. But you're saying this was not what kept the industry.

• 28:16Speaker 03

  You still need you still need a drone. You still need a safe drone system of systems. Right. So it's it's a bit like saying there's no roads, but you don't have a car. Or there's no roads, but you have this car that you built in your garage. But every third time you start it up, it blows up.

• 28:33Kevin Roose?

  So the bottleneck was the hardware, in other words, not the.

• 28:35Speaker 03

  Software, hardware, the integration of all of it, working out how you integrate into airspace. And then if you had all of that, then you need a framework. And in around 2022, if I got really serious about how it handled this space. And through whether it be policy or whether it be establishment of a a section that focused on this area, we were able to work through what that policy suite looked like for this type of drone. I'm not suggesting for one minute the framework was there. Don't get me wrong, but I would argue vehemently that no one was ready. And even if it was there, no one could build into it anyway.

• 29:17Kevin Roose?

  There was some reporting by Bloomberg about some of the incidents and crashes that had happened with the drones at the Pendleton, Oregon facility, including one in 2021, where there was a drone fell out of the sky, caught on fire and ended up sparking something like a 20 acre brush fire. What was the story there? And how confident are you that something like that isn't going to happen with these latest drones?

• 29:40Speaker 03

  It's test, right? And so if you test for failure, you get failure. And you test in controlled environments, right, where you can have a fire like that. And you have emergency response ready to emergence, respond emergently. And it makes for good news, but doesn't make for great engineering. Right. And I would be skeptical if somebody wasn't testing something, the failure in this mode. Now, if you've got a big commercial airplane, well, you're not flying it into the ground.

• 30:08Kevin Roose?

  So that was an intentional crash. That wasn't like a malfunction in the system.

• 30:13Speaker 03

  That particular case was a malfunction system. But it was a malfunction we were testing for. So we'd induced that malfunction, you know, we have the luxury of not having humans in danger. And so therefore, the hardware is not so expensive that you wouldn't test it to failure. So as I said, it makes great news. But if you ever interview a technologist or an engineer, there is not testing stuff to failure. I would be highly skeptical about what they're putting up around the public.

• 30:42Casey Newton?

  Right. Tell us about, we have some sort of questions about various scenarios that we think are in people's minds when they think about a retailer like Amazon putting a bunch of drones up in the sky and delivering products. One of them is just, what do they do about the sort of tall trees and other like, you know, dense areas? How are they able to avoid those?

• 31:02Speaker 03

  That's a really great question. So stuff that's there is not dynamic. Now, things like trees grow, right? And so we, our algorithms, our sense and avoid algorithm and our perception algorithm is trained over hundreds of thousands of data sets, right? We have another group called DA2, which basically stands for data collection. It's a second fleet where we put our cameras on a, for want of a better word, a mule fleet. And we go and take aerial images of different environments from the ground, you know, phone sticks and attached to helicopters and all this sort of stuff. And we use that to train our algorithm.

• 31:45Speaker 03

  And so that's one part of our safety layer. The other part of our safety layer is to then go and say, does that look like it's meant to look? And if it doesn't, is it safe? Third part of our safety layer, it doesn't look the way it's meant to look, and it's not within the profile that I can deliver. So therefore, I'm out of here.

• 32:03Casey Newton?

  I imagine that another thing that people are going to be thinking when they hear about Amazon drones potentially coming to their neighborhoods is, what if they hit stuff up there? I mean, what if they collide with a plane or a bird or, you know, maybe a stationary object that's, that's, you know, tall in the sky? Talk to us about that.

• 32:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, we shouldn't hit anything. We hit something, something's wrong. You know, someone's trying to hit us if we hit something because we've designed the drone to sense and avoid.

• 32:31Casey Newton?

  So it can avoid a bird?

• 32:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, you can avoid some birds. Like, I mean, the bird's gonna wanna go straight at the drone. The bird's coming off second best. Um, I mean, that's how it sort of works in aviation.

• 32:41Casey Newton?

  This is a message to birds. Do not mess with the drone.

• 32:44Kevin Roose?

  Birds are unnoticed.

• 32:45Casey Newton?

  Yeah.

• 32:46Speaker 03

  Look, we have done everything that's humanly possible to sense and avoid what's around us and sense and avoid. We're not gonna be flying into airplanes. We're not gonna be flying into static objects. We're not gonna be landing on things we shouldn't be landing on. The bottom line, that's part of what you're designed for, right? Anyone, like, if your listeners sort of know anything about aerospace design, or even automotive design, right? You lay out your failure cases. You lay out what those allowances need to be. In aerospace, we design through redundant systems. So, you know, the drone can lose a motor, can you lose a prop, it can lose compute, it can lose battery, and it's gonna get back home.

• 33:26Casey Newton?

  I'm curious on the sort of sensing and avoiding of it all. I know that most of the systems are automated. Do you also have a way for, like, a remote operator to sort of take control of a camera and say, like, oh, yeah, that actually is a crane we didn't expect and do something? Or how's that work?

• 33:42Speaker 03

  No, an operator can't take control of the vision. In fact, that's not how it works. An operator can abort a mission. They have two options: launch and abort. And...

• 33:54Casey Newton?

  We have the same two options in a podcast, by the way, but go on.

• 33:57Speaker 03

  It's not lie. That's the difference. But, you know, if they see something dynamically happening that the drone isn't seeing, which, you know, frankly, is 0.0% or nothing. That's not gonna happen. But they can, if they're concerned about something that's dynamically happening, they can abort the mission. Abort means the thing will turn around and come home.

• 34:19Kevin Roose?

  Right. One more thing that I think we should talk about is the risk that people will try to take these things out of the air. There was a man who was arrested in Florida earlier this year for trying to shoot down a Walmart delivery drone with a pistol.

• 34:32Speaker 03

  It's Walmart, right?

• 34:33Kevin Roose?

  Yes. A judge recently ordered that man to pay $5,000 in compensation. But I think this is a fair question to ask of Amazon as it goes through this delivery drone process, because people, some number of them, are just gonna hate these things flying around. Some of them may try to take a shot at it. So have you had that happen? Do you plan on that happening? What are the contingency plans if that tries to happen? Are you gonna be prosecuting people? Talk to us about this.

• 34:59Speaker 03

  We have not had that happen. Um, will it happen? Probably. If it does, we'll use the full force of the law. I mean, it's federally dictated airspace. So it's like shooting in an airplane. And if you're silly enough to do that, then you go to jail. It's that simple.

• 35:17Casey Newton?

  Last one of these concerns, and I have to say, this was actually Kevin's idea. And so I'm just gonna stick, Kevin, do you wanna do it?

• 35:22Kevin Roose?

  No, do it.

• 35:23Casey Newton?

  Oh, you shot me a look. It's a really good point. I hadn't thought of it. So here's the idea. The idea is you see an Amazon drone coming in and you think, aha, I can take that off the lawn and resell it. So is there any concern that the drones are going to inspire a new generation of porch pirates who can just watch where the drone lands and then go grab the package?

• 35:46Speaker 03

  No, you've stumped me. No, look, I'm not because unlike dropping something off at someone's front door, we're typically dropping stuff off in someone's backyard, right? So we've got that advantage. And typically, if you need something in 30 minutes, and in this case, if you're in Phoenix and you've paid for it, you're gonna want it at 30 minutes. You've been typically standing by to get it.

• 36:10Casey Newton?

  Yeah.

• 36:11Speaker 03

  I mean, I know how keen you are to get the butt cream.

• 36:14Kevin Roose?

  He's very keen.

• 36:15Speaker 03

  Bum bum cream?

• 36:16Casey Newton?

  And he's very keen, let's just say.

• 36:20Speaker 03

  So, you know, we're listening out for the drone. We're waiting for it to come. Now, we're not gonna hear the drone from inside, but, you know, we know it's coming. It gave us a time. So if you want something that keenly,

• 36:33Speaker 03

  you're gonna get to it before anybody else.

• 36:35Casey Newton?

  We have to ask about the cost. I know you're not gonna answer, but I think every, once they, particularly if they see the video and, you know, the entire production, they're gonna say, how much money is Amazon losing on these deliveries? So I know you can't answer it, but like, tell me, like, could this possibly be profitable ever?

• 36:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 36:55Kevin Roose?

  And by the way, if you do wanna tell us how much money Amazon's losing on every delivery via drone, feel free to do that.

• 37:01Speaker 03

  I would like to think of it as an investment.

• 37:02Casey Newton?

  Okay.

• 37:05Kevin Roose?

  Okay, how much money is Amazon investing in every drone delivery?

• 37:09Speaker 03

  Look, the one thing Amazon does better than any other company in the world that I have seen in my time is we take long-term bets and we take those long-term bets on behalf of our customers. So if, you know, imagine the mocking you would have got, I'm going to sell books on the internet. And 30 years later, look what you've got, right? So this is just the very start and our models show that at the end of the day, you know, when we say by 2029, I want to deliver 500 million deliveries, we're cost positive. Because you can't deliver packages indefinitely at a loss, right? But at the end of the day, right now, this is learning to scale up to where we need to be. And if you think about the flywheel, it's pretty simple, right?

• 37:54Speaker 03

  The more customers you can serve, the more packages you can deliver, the more locations you can operate. The cost comes down.

• 38:03Kevin Roose?

  My questions are sort of around like the density of packages. I mean, it seems to me like Amazon and every other e-commerce retailer depends on being very optimized in the fulfillment centers, in the, you know, packing the packages tightly into vans and trucks and sending them out on optimized routes. Like sending things one at a time on a drone seems incredibly inefficient. And I just don't understand how you get to the kind of unit costs and economics that you have with something like traditional delivery, if you're only able to send out one package or even a handful of packages at a time.

• 38:39Speaker 03

  Most people order about 1.4, 1.6 packages at a time.

• 38:45Kevin Roose?

  And I'm not talking about the people ordering multiple things at a time. I'm talking about like a bunch of, you know, hundreds of packages go into an Amazon van that goes door to door delivering stuff. That goes along a very optimized route. It's not doing like one trip to the warehouse, one trip to a person's house, one trip back to the warehouse like these drones are. That's seems incredibly inefficient.

• 39:03Speaker 03

  10 minutes.

• 39:04Kevin Roose?

  Okay. But so you

• 39:05Speaker 03

  And look how many people were working at the fulfillment center today. When you can cycle 21 with that many people, it literally all is cycling. If you deliver one package to 12 people, or you deliver 21 packages for 12 people, the cost of the package is less because you pay for the drone once, right? So do I want somebody being able to order as many packages as they can fit in that box up to five pounds? Absolutely. And that'll come by the end of one Q next year, we'll have that. Do I want you being able to order, build a basket? And say, look, I'm going to want all these things delivered to me by drone in the next hour. Yep, we're not there yet. But the reality is, when you think about 10 minutes back and

• 39:49Speaker 03

  forth, doing 21 cycles off those two pads, utilizing 12 drones, there's the magic right there. It's cycling.

• 39:57Kevin Roose?

  Over a longer period of time, do you hope that that drone can carry 10, 15, 20 pounds? Do you see the drones sort of making multiple stops?

• 40:04Speaker 03

  Not that morphology. We'll create a different morphology.

• 40:09Kevin Roose?

  You mean like a different shape of?

• 40:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:11Kevin Roose?

  You're gonna have to use small words around Casey.

• 40:15Kevin Roose?

  I know what a morphology is.

• 40:17Speaker 03

  He's very good, actually.

• 40:18Kevin Roose?

  I studied morphology in college.

• 40:20Speaker 03

  He's morphing right now.

• 40:21Kevin Roose?

  Yeah. My grandfather was a morphologist. I'm sorry, go ahead.

• 40:26Speaker 03

  We will need to look it up. We will create different shape for, you know, where we need to go. This drone size, it is the backbone. Because if you think about the way this thing is set up, it's to get into backyards or yards or spaces like the one we've got now. And there'll be some stuff we release next year, which will show the utility of this drone utilizing other delivery modes, for sure.

• 40:52Kevin Roose?

  So people can now get deliveries via drone if they live in the designated area. I assume you chose Phoenix because the weather is very mild here. It's, you know, there're not a lot of rain, not a lot of snow. For people who live in parts of the world where there is worse weather, should those people expect to wait longer before something like Amazon Prime are is available in their area?

• 41:16Speaker 03

  Our plan is to start rolling out at scale effective next year. And you know, this drone has been set out for where our customers are, anywhere in the world. That's how we designed it. Now, we're not going to be doing icing conditions, but arguably no one's flying in icing conditions. Look what happens when it's icing at the airport. Aeroplanes are getting sprayed, it's chaos, you know, that sort of stuff. Um, but that's what it's been designed for. And by the end of 2026, we'll be doing low light deliveries, nighttime deliveries, you know, that sort of stuff. So this is just the start. Um, and, and you're right, like putting a gift card in a box and shipping it somewhere. That's not the end, that's the beginning.

• 41:54Kevin Roose?

  What about dense places, places where people maybe don't have a backyard with a, you know, area big enough to drop a package in? What about people who live in apartment buildings?

• 42:03Speaker 03

  That's a wonderful question you should ask me midway through next year.

• 42:05Kevin Roose?

  Okay, okay.

• 42:07Speaker 03

  We, we do deliver to apartments today.

• 42:09Casey Newton?

  If, yeah, if there's the, if you have like a good enough landing pad for them.

• 42:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, it's not even a landing pad, it's a delivery location.

• 42:14Casey Newton?

  A delivery location.

• 42:15Speaker 03

  Not to be prudantic, but um, you, you hang on to that question next year because it will answer itself.

• 42:21Casey Newton?

  Let's just say the delivery location has to have a certain morphology in order to be.

• 42:25Speaker 03

  Configuration.

• 42:26Casey Newton?

  Yeah.

• 42:27Speaker 03

  Certain configuration.

• 42:28Casey Newton?

  All right, I have another efficiency question. Uh, really, basically any time on the show, we talk about any kind of physical technology. Our listeners want us to ask about the environmental impact. So what can you talk about the environmental impact of making a delivery that requires a custom drone to, you know, fly maybe eight miles and back? And uh, is there anything that you can do to kind of mitigate that impact?

• 42:51Speaker 03

  I love it. It's a great question because we design, you know, we got the climate pledge, right? Amazon climate page. And so we designed the drone to be recyclable. Um, the materials will be used in a recyclable fashion. Um, it's a, uh, got a battery powered, which not emitting, um, anything along the way. And so really right now, you know, unless we're running an electric van, it, it's the most environmentally conscious way of delivering. Um, now, when you get into a van, a Rivian van, for instance, is carrying more packages. Um, so it's hard to, it's hard for a drone that we've created to do this sort of mission to compete with that. But at the end of the day, it works backwards from the climate pledge.

• 43:33Speaker 06

  We're gonna pause because we're gonna go outside.

• 43:35Casey Newton?

  Oh, the drone is here.

• 43:37Kevin Roose?

  The drone's here.

• 43:40Kevin Roose?

  Our drone is here and that means we gotta go outside and pick it up. When we come back, we'll tell you what's in the box. What's in the box, Kevin?

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• 45:43Casey Newton?

  We've now moved to the rear morphology of the home. Where we're awaiting the arrival of an Amazon drone with Kevin's bum bum cream.

• 45:52Kevin Roose?

  It's technically our bum bum cream, right? We purchased that as a joint operation.

• 45:56Casey Newton?

  We did.

• 45:57Kevin Roose?

  So we are in, now we are in the backyard of this house. We are waiting for the Amazon drone to arrive with our package. And it's gonna come flying out of the sky from some direction. And it's gonna drop the package, ideally, onto the lawn behind us. We're next to a golf course also. And it looks like someone's in the sand trap, so, sorry about that.

• 46:22Speaker 07

  I mean, there's a chance he could hit the drone with the ball if he shanks it to the right.

• 46:25Kevin Roose?

  Honestly, that'd be pretty impressive.

• 46:27Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 46:27Kevin Roose?

  Oh, here comes our drone!

• 46:29Speaker 07

  Look, it's just like we predicted. It came out of nowhere.

• 46:32Kevin Roose?

  Okay, wow.

• 46:33Speaker 07

  Okay.

• 46:33Kevin Roose?

  Here we go.

• 46:34Casey Newton?

  All right.

• 46:35Kevin Roose?

  Hello?

• 46:36Casey Newton?

  Hey. It's identified us.

• 46:46Casey Newton?

  Making sure it's safe to land, I guess.

• 46:50Casey Newton?

  Slowly descending.

• 46:53Casey Newton?

  All right.

• 46:54Kevin Roose?

  Covering down. Casey, go grab it!

• 46:56Casey Newton?

  No!

• 46:59Casey Newton?

  Wow!

• 47:06Kevin Roose?

  Bye!

• 47:07Casey Newton?

  It did not touch down?

• 47:08Kevin Roose?

  It did not touch down, it just dropped it.

• 47:10Casey Newton?

  I don't know why, I assumed it would touch down.

• 47:17Kevin Roose?

  Thank you!

• 47:23Speaker 07

  You'll have to describe what just happened before people could have gone.

• 47:26Kevin Roose?

  Okay, so the drone just came over, it descended to a height of around 14 feet.

• 47:32Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 47:32Kevin Roose?

  A little compartment opened in the bottom. And then the package that we ordered dropped onto the lawn in a little cushioned box.

• 47:40Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm. And then the drone just elevated and flew away and started out of sight again.

• 47:46Kevin Roose?

  Shall we go see what's in our box?

• 47:47Casey Newton?

  Let's go see what's in our box.

• 47:49Kevin Roose?

  Casey, this is your Christmas present from me.

• 47:52Speaker 07

  Oh, good, great.

• 47:53Kevin Roose?

  Yeah.

• 47:59Casey Newton?

  Alright.

• 48:06Casey Newton?

  And what do you know?

• 48:09Casey Newton?

  Our Brazilian bum bum cream.

• 48:12Kevin Roose?

  For the man who has everything.

• 48:13Casey Newton?

  For the man who has everything. Look at that.

• 48:16Kevin Roose?

  Amazing.

• 48:17Casey Newton?

  It's a caffeine-rich guarana extract. And in the words of Sol de Janeiro, "Love it, flaunt it, you've got it."

• 48:27Casey Newton?

  That's what it says on the package. "Love it, flaunt it, you've got it."

• 48:30Kevin Roose?

  Hello.

• 48:30Speaker 06

  You guys from Amazon?

• 48:32Casey Newton?

  Yeah.

• 48:32Kevin Roose?

  Well.

• 48:32Speaker 06

  You scared the death out of a lot of people. "What the hell's that? What's going on?"

• 48:38Speaker 06

  Does this associate you guys with New Jersey?

• 48:41Casey Newton?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 48:43Speaker 06

  A little difference. They're probably 16, 17-year-olds having fun. You guys are a lot older.

• 48:48Speaker 03

  These guys are from the New York Times. I'm from Amazon.

• 48:50Speaker 06

  Yeah, from the Amazon, you know, so what the heck?

• 48:53Kevin Roose?

  I'm Kevin.

• 48:53Speaker 06

  Kevin, I'm Gino.

• 48:54Kevin Roose?

  Gino, nice to meet you. Neighbor Gino. So you've seen a number of these, you've seen a number of these drone, uh...

• 49:02Speaker 06

  He's, well, I come out one day, I seen the truck and I seen all that equipment. First thing that hit me, well, it's a rental doing a porno here.

• 49:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:12Kevin Roose?

  Has that happened before?

• 49:13Speaker 06

  Not here, but I have no other places.

• 49:16Speaker 03

  A drone delivery point. Now, this is quite a series. Quite an imagination.

• 49:20Speaker 06

  So then when I went in there, I talked to a girl out in front. She says, "Yeah, it's Amazon, the film." So I came here. I said, "Maybe I could get in the, in the movie scene. Hey, look, the old man, he'll wait for his drone."

• 49:31Speaker 03

  You want to use this cream.

• 49:32Speaker 06

  His Viagra to come in the mail.

• 49:34Speaker 03

  You want to use this cream. You want to use this cream. Gino, thank you very much.

• 49:39Speaker 06

  Thanks, Gino.

• 49:39Kevin Roose?

  Thanks, Gino.

• 49:40Speaker 06

  Thanks, Gino.

• 49:41Kevin Roose?

  Don't shoot the drones, please.

• 49:43Casey Newton?

  You're a legend.

• 49:47Speaker 00

  Kevin, Casey, can you just recap what happened?

• 49:49Casey Newton?

  Yeah, so.

• 49:50Speaker 03

  Please, I'll put my clothes back on.

• 49:51Casey Newton?

  We were, um, we had just, we had just sort of picked up our drone delivery when a, a neighbor popped over to sort of see what the commotion was about. He apparently helps to take care of the pool.

• 50:02Kevin Roose?

  That was an Amazon drone, yes.

• 50:04Casey Newton?

  Yeah, any feedback?

• 50:06Speaker 07

  He just dropped it from?

• 50:07Casey Newton?

  Yeah, from about 14 feet high. And if you live in this area, you can get anything that they offer within one hour. Yeah.

• 50:16Speaker 03

  See you, guys. Thank you.

• 50:18Casey Newton?

  So that was where the house abuts a golf course. And so a couple of golfers just stopped by. We assumed they were Hartford fans, but it turns out they want to know what the drone was.

• 50:29Kevin Roose?

  Yeah.

• 50:30Casey Newton?

  So, yeah, so we met Gino, the neighbor, who was taking care of the pool and stopped by to kind of share stories from his life and his impressions of drones.

• 50:40Kevin Roose?

  Yeah.

• 50:41Casey Newton?

  Yeah, and then we talked to some golfers. So it's really rallying the community to say, hey, what is that thing?

• 50:47Kevin Roose?

  Yes, there do seem to be a lot of reactions ranging from like those golfers thought it was pretty cool.

• 50:52Casey Newton?

  Yeah.

• 50:53Kevin Roose?

  And Gino, the neighbor, thought maybe this was something that people were a little more concerned about because of all the drones flying over New Jersey and stuff. They just didn't know what they were. So probably as with any new technology, a range of reactions.

• 51:06Casey Newton?

  All right.

• 51:07Speaker 07

  Let's go inside.

• 51:08Kevin Roose?

  Let's go inside, I'm hot.

• 51:14Kevin Roose?

  So one thing I noticed about the delivery is that these drones attract attention, right? You know, I know you said it's quieter than the previous version, but it still makes a pretty noticeable sound if you're outside and nearby. And they're visible and they fly through the air and they're somewhat novel. And I'm curious if you think that's a good introduction to the world of drone delivery for people, or if you're trying to make these things a little less noticeable as they're making their way through neighborhoods dropping off packages.

• 51:43Speaker 03

  I'm trying to make them safe. All right, and that's what I'm trying to do. It's not, you know, the morphology or the configuration.

• 51:51Casey Newton?

  Word of the day.

• 51:52Speaker 03

  Word of the day. The configuration of the drone needs to be the configuration of the drone that makes it safe and not a nuisance. And we all saw what we saw, right? Like two golfers smiling, asking, intrigued. Gino came in, Gino was buzzing, right? Like he was, he was happy, he was telling us stories, you know.

• 52:09Kevin Roose?

  But he said the neighbors had had concerns about them because of these drones flying, right? So I just want to say that, not to say that everyone is concerned, but these things fly through the air, they're noticeable, and they do freak some people out.

• 52:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, he said, he said they were wondering what was going on, considering what was happening on the East Coast.

• 52:27Kevin Roose?

  Yeah.

• 52:28Speaker 03

  And so that's not, that I wouldn't say Gino was concerned, I mean, he didn't look concerned, he looked happy as a clam, but so. Our job is to make this normal, right? That's that's our job. And until it's normal, people are always rightfully skeptical of change, right? And it's just a changing delivery um sequence. But when you need something in thirty minutes, you will very quickly become used to the fact that you can order from up to sixty thousand items, seventy thousand items, depending on the SSD, and get it within thirty minutes, right? Now, the promise now is sixty minutes, but there's no substitute for that.

• 53:05Casey Newton?

  It, I mean, it, it probably sounds somewhat dismissive to frame it this way, but I'm wondering if maybe the main benefit to Amazon of Prime Air is the marketing effect. Because if you're a customer and you do need something in a hurry and it comes, whatever expense went into it for you, but for all the turmoil of making that happen, that person is probably going to think, yeah, I'm just gonna use Amazon for everything.

• 53:31Kevin Roose?

  And it also strikes me that people do acclimate fairly quickly to new things. I mean, I remember when Waymos and other autonomous vehicles first started driving in the streets of San Francisco, you would stop in your tracks, people would point, people would stare. And then a couple of months go by, you start seeing them more and more. And now, I barely notice. The only people who stop and point are tourists because they've never seen them before. And for people who live in San Francisco, they're just sort of part of the landscape. So I can imagine something like that happening with drones too. But it does seem like we are just at the start of that process.

• 54:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, look, you know, you know, for me, our job is not, isn't, we're not about the drone. That's the thing, that's the hardest thing to get people's head around. We're about thirty minute click to delivery at scale, five hundred million packages by the end of twenty twenty nine. And if I do my job right, no one's gonna care about the drone. What they're gonna care about is did I get my package within thirty minutes? And if you think about it like that, my job is not the drone guy, right? Even though I've been known to drone on, but um my dad joke.

• 54:32Casey Newton?

  Honestly, I'm surprised it wasn't one of us that made the joke first. So congratulations.

• 54:38Kevin Roose?

  I was just crossing that off my list of dad jokes here.

• 54:41Speaker 03

  It got, it got cut off the script at some point in another event. I thought I should try it somewhere. But honestly, like, my job is not to, my job is to deliver packages within thirty minutes, right? And and and that's what I say my job is, right? The only way we know how to do that today is in the air.

• 54:59Kevin Roose?

  Can you give us any sense of what is coming in 2025? Is there a number of cities that you're hoping to open up in? Or what can you tell us?

• 55:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, 2025, you know, there's a bunch of announcements going to come out. You know, we've got features coming on board. We've got multi-product ordering. We've got basket building and then more locations coming next year that we'll talk a little bit about. And we'll go international. We've talked about Italy and the UK, but we want to expand beyond that. Once we get our Italian certification, that opens up Europe. So, you know, this isn't what I love about this stage of a development program. I've been on, I've been on quite a few in my career is it's we're no longer gonna do. We're doing and, and that's, that's the, the joy of like when you can learn and see this sort of thing. And you see people's reactions.

• 55:51Speaker 03

  You feel like you're delivering something that's going to change the world, right? Beats, beats anything else on earth.

• 55:56Kevin Roose?

  So, Amazon delivers billions of packages a year. Give us a sense of what, what 500 million packages would represent in terms of the overall volume of Amazon?

• 56:08Speaker 03

  You know, it's in the, it's in the single digit percentages of what we deliver, right? And if you, if you think about our plan, you know, 500 million packages a year to 100 million customers. You know, from over 140 sites, you know, and it'll be more or less that varying degrees. If you do the math on that, it's 4.5 packages per year per customer. That's less than a single digit percentages, one hand percentages of what people order today in a year.

• 56:40Kevin Roose?

  Does that represent a scaling back of the original vision here? I mean, I'm not sure that Jeff Bezos attached specific predictions about package delivery back in 2013. Maybe he did, but my sense from watching the, the press that he did back then, the 60 Minutes interview and whatnot, is that he anticipated that this was sort of the next frontier in delivery and that this would, I don't know if it would eventually overtake ground delivery as the main way that people got Amazon packages, but certainly not a single digit percentage of Amazon deliveries was, was what he was sort of envisioning and projecting out. So, do you think that Amazon's ambitions in drone deliveries have been pared back?

• 57:16Speaker 03

  No, they've grown from when I got here. So I can say categorically, no.

• 57:21Kevin Roose?

  And you got here in 20?

• 57:22Speaker 03

  2020. And, you know, I wrote the product roadmap. To to lay this out, right? So um I don't think Jeff was wrong. I think Jeff was right. I I mean, I I think people like to look at when the announcement was made and how long it took. But no one look at, we just saw it, just happened, right? And um, you know, I feel like Ricky Bobby, it's real. Did that just happen? Yes, it did, right? Um, and if you think about it, you don't need everything in thirty minutes, right? That that that's the point of what we're all talking about, right? So it's it's this flip side debate where people are almost arguing against themselves, right? Do you think that there's a need for it? Is there a need for it? Is it big enough? Is it not big enough? It's gonna be what it's gonna be.

• 58:05Speaker 03

  And the bottom line is, um, no one can ever tell me speed doesn't matter, right? Now, when you're talking about aerospace artifact, the number one item is safety. And then the next thing is speed. Um, but I can count the last two weeks, how many things I've ordered online? And if I could have got all of them in thirty minutes, I would have taken it. To me, utility and convenience is what it's all about. And if you think about this mode of transportation beyond package delivery and think about pharmacy, um, or think about, um, you know, medical supplies, it it's gonna come because it has utility.

• 58:44Kevin Roose?

  Yeah. Well, David, thank you so much. David, I really feel like you delivered on this episode. You really left a a carbon footprint.

• 58:54Speaker 03

  Well, you know what? I'm glad you appreciate because everybody else is trying to cancel carbon. So, you know, I feel good about that. Hey, guys, thanks for taking the time and it's a long day out.

• 59:23Speaker 00

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• 59:57Speaker 04

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• 1:01:07Kevin Roose?

  And one more thing before we go. We wanted to send you off into the holidays this year with a little holiday cheer.

• 1:01:12Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:01:16Kevin Roose?

  Well, Casey, it's time to don our gay apparel.

• 1:01:19Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm. And that's the apparel I wear every day. But for you, it's a special occasion.

• 1:01:24Kevin Roose?

  Yes, so if you're not watching us on YouTube, you won't see we have our holiday sweaters on. Yours is like Santa riding on a unicorn with a sword.

• 1:01:32Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:01:33Kevin Roose?

  Mine is a Darth Vader Merry Sithmas sweater.

• 1:01:36Speaker 07

  And on the whole, I have to say, my apparel way gayer than yours.

• 1:01:40Kevin Roose?

  It's true. But now we also have Santa hats to add to the mix. I'm going to put these on under my headphones.

• 1:01:48Kevin Roose?

  Okay, how do we look?

• 1:01:50Casey Newton?

  Worse than usual.

• 1:01:55Kevin Roose?

  Now, Casey, we've started an annual tradition here on the Hard Fork Podcast of doing a tech-themed Christmas carol at the end of the year.

• 1:02:03Casey Newton?

  Mm-hmm, yes, we were inspired by Ezra Klein doing the same thing over on his show.

• 1:02:08Kevin Roose?

  Now, I know you hate this part of our program, but I happen to love Christmas carols. And I also love writing parody lyrics to Christmas songs. And so this year, we have written a new version of "Hard Forkin' Christmas", our song from last year.

• 1:02:25Casey Newton?

  Our hit song from last year.

• 1:02:27Kevin Roose?

  Yes, dozens of people downloaded and listened to it and said that they loved it. So we decided to go again.

• 1:02:34Casey Newton?

  Yes.

• 1:02:34Kevin Roose?

  You're looking at me like you absolutely hate this, like you'd rather be doing anything else.

• 1:02:38Casey Newton?

  You know, one of my fondest wishes as a boy would be that I had a beautiful singing voice, but that was not on my journey. You actually do have a nice singing voice. So that's really the difference. It's not so much that I, you know, don't like to sing. It's that I feel self-conscious about my voice.

• 1:02:52Kevin Roose?

  Oh, I see. Well, maybe they can use autotune or some other kind of magic in the production process.

• 1:02:57Casey Newton?

  Prayers up to the engineers for what's about to happen.

• 1:02:59Kevin Roose?

  Okay, here we go. Let's sing the new version, 2024's edition of "A Hard Forkin' Christmas".

• 1:03:06Casey Newton?

  Wait, before we do that, shouldn't we sort of offer some holiday wishes to our listeners?

• 1:03:10Kevin Roose?

  Yes.

• 1:03:10Casey Newton?

  Yeah, so I guess I would just wish that all of our listeners have a wonderful holiday. We are very thankful that you listen to us each week and manually install Hard Fork on not just your phone, but all your friends' and relatives' phones. And generally, just talk about Hard Fork constantly in every circumstance. It means a lot to us.

• 1:03:29Kevin Roose?

  We have so much fun making this show, and it's so rewarding to know that people are out there listening. And we just want to keep doing this again next year, and hopefully we'll get the chance.

• 1:03:39Casey Newton?

  Yeah, fingers crossed.

• 1:03:40Kevin Roose?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:40Casey Newton?

  Thanks, everybody. Happy holidays.

• 1:03:42Kevin Roose?

  Thank you.

• 1:03:42Casey Newton?

  And on that note, let's hear some musical notes.

• 1:03:50Speaker 07

  On a hard fork in Christmas, my true love gave to me Some slop made by ChatGPT. On a hard fork in Christmas, my true love gave to me Two Waymo rides and some slop made by ChatGPT. On a hard fork in Christmas, my true love gave to me Three Vision Pros, two Waymo rides and some slop made by ChatGPT. On a hard fork in Christmas, my true love gave to me Four crypto coins, three Vision Pros, two Waymo rides and some slop made by ChatGPT.

• 1:04:35Speaker 07

  We're doing great. On a hard fork in Christmas, my true love gave to me Five Aura Rings. For sleep tracking. Four crypto coins, three Vision Pros, two Waymo rides and some slop made by ChatGPT. On a hard fork in Christmas, my true love gave to me Six stupid TikToks. Five Aura Rings. Four crypto coins, three Vision Pros, two Waymo rides and some slop made by ChatGPT. On a hard fork in Christmas, my true love gave to me

• 1:05:20Speaker 07

  Seven Neon Brat Memes, six stupid TikToks. Five Aura Rings. Four crypto coins, three Vision Pros, two Waymo rides and some slop made by ChatGPT. On a hard fork in Christmas, my true love gave to me Eight scary deep fakes, seven Neon Brat Memes, six stupid TikToks. Five Aura Rings.

• 1:05:51Speaker 07

  Four crypto coins, three vision pros, two Waymo rides, and some slop made by ChatGPT. On a hard fork in Christmas, my true love gave to me. Nine blue sky follows, eight scary deep fake, seven neon brat memes, six stupid TikToks, five aura rings. Four crypto coins, three vision pros, two Waymo rides, and some slop made by ChatGPT. Get it together. On a hard fork in Christmas, my true love gave to me. Ten rocks for eating, nine blue sky follows,

• 1:06:33Speaker 07

  eight scary deep fake, seven neon brat memes, six stupid TikToks, five aura rings. Four crypto coins, three vision pros, two Waymo rides, and some slop made by ChatGPT. Almost done. On a hard fork in Christmas, my true love gave to me. Eleven poly lovers, ten rocks for eating, nine blue sky follows, eight scary deep fake, seven neon brat memes, six stupid TikToks, five aura rings. Four crypto coins, three vision pros, two Waymo rides,

• 1:07:15Speaker 07

  and some slop made by ChatGPT. Last one. On a hard fork in Christmas, my true love gave to me. Twelve AR glasses, eleven poly lovers, ten rocks for eating, nine blue sky follows, eight scary deep fake, seven neon brat memes, six stupid TikToks, five aura rings. Four crypto coins, three vision pros, two Waymo rides, and some slop made by ChatGPT. Happy holidays. Happy holidays.

• 1:07:57Casey Newton?

  Hard Fork is produced by Rachel Cohn and Whitney Jones. We're edited by Jen Quinian. We're fact-checked by Caitlin Love. Today's show was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Original music by Alicia Baetut, Mary Lozano, Diane Wong, Rowan Nemisto, and Dan Powell. Our audience editor is Noel Golubli. Video production by Ryan Manning and Chris Schott. You can watch this whole episode, and you should, on YouTube at youtube.com/hardfork. Special thanks to Paul Schuman, Puywing Tam, Dahlia Hadad, and Jeffrey Miranda. You can email us at [email protected] with your drone order.

• 1:08:55Speaker 05

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