Alphabet's Wing rolls out commercial drone delivery in Texas
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The first commercial drone deliveries in the U.S. will take off on Thursday as Alphabet's (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Wing unleashes its aircraft over the suburban towns of Frisco and Little Elm, just north of Dallas, Texas. If successful, the service could revolutionize how goods are currently transported around cities. Wing has partnered with Walgreens (NASDAQ:WBA), Blue Bell Creameries, Easyvet, and Texas Health for the initial rollout, meaning consumers will be able to order prescription pet meds and ice cream, among other items.
How it works? Retail workers will load up the drones outside participating stores - rather than a Wing facility - carrying small packages that weigh 2.6 lbs or less. They will then climb to a cruise height of around 150 feet above the ground and travel their routes autonomously (remote pilots will be on standby to take control if something goes wrong). Once a delivery drone reaches its destination, it will stay at roughly 23 feet while lowering the package on board into a customer's yard via a cable.
"I do want to set clear expectations: Not everyone who lives within range of our drones will be able to order on Day 1," Wing CEO Adam Woodworth declared. "We're going to invite customers in groups to make sure everyone has a good first experience with drone delivery." Eventually, Wing hopes to expand the service to all the tens of thousands of homes in Frisco and Little Elm, and then to other regions in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area.
Go deeper: Wing has been testing its service in the Dallas suburbs since last year following experiments in Christiansburg, Virginia; Helsinki, Finland; and Canberra and Logan, Australia (it just made its 200,000th delivery). Similar to sister company Waymo, Wing is focused on achieving testing milestones before pressing the button on wide-scale deployment. Amazon Prime Air (AMZN) and Uber Eats (UBER) have also promised to ratchet up drone delivery operations in the near future, but until now, the technology has been mainly focused on small-scale trials.