Envision, if you would, a delivery truck swinging by your home. (Could be from Amazon or FedEx or UPS, or another service entirely.) The vehicle is loud; disruptively so, almost. And not only is this order not being delivered on time, but the package itself is busted up; damaged, in some way.
Through none of that does a satisfactory experience make.
Enter Zipline, with their greeting (and guarantee) of “Welcome to the best delivery not on earth.”
Recently, Zipline announced its new platform (and, vis-à-vis, its new standard for how deliveries should be handled) that provides super quiet, fast, and extremely precise autonomous delivery directly to city and suburb homes.
Zipline’s delivery drones (named “Zip,” as seen in the photo above) are next-gen, silent machines (i.e. “silent” compared to the sound of a soft wind, rustling leaves) that are expected to deliver up to seven times faster than traditional automobile delivery and are able to complete 10-mile trips in approximately 10 minutes flat.
For the past several years, Zipline has fine-tuned Zips to provide optimal customer-drone delivery experiences at scale. Zips operate more than 300 feet up in the air in transit, then hover safely and nearly inaudibly when arriving at delivery destinations. Packages are neatly dropped off (and on areas as small as homes’ front steps or on single-person patio tables or chairs, no less).
All of this is made possible via innovations in Zipline’s aircraft and propeller designs, but let’s also not discount the environmental innovating at work here, too. Helping to really exemplify this is national restaurant chain Sweetgreen, for example. By using Zips for food deliveries, Sweetgreen has moved closer to its pledge of being carbon-neutral by 2027. Sweetgreen’s customers can also expect to get their orders with 97% less energy exhausted, in the process.
And when Zipline says Zips can delivery nearly* anything, they mean it (*within six to eight pounds). Lightbulbs, sauce or jam jars, lightbulbs, phone chargers, shampoos or conditioners, or even public healthcare service aid like vaccines or prescriptions from local pharmacies. (When considering the latter, think about how diagnostics could be expedited and how medical devices could be more efficiently sent out and received. Of course, given that Zips continue carrying loads as safely as Zipline attests.)
“With smart end-to-end logistics and autonomous, quiet, and instant delivery tech, we’re creating teleportation for the modern world,” said Keller Rinaudo Cliffton, CEO and co-founder of Zipline. “The future of delivery is faster, more sustainable, quieter, and frankly more exciting. It’s a clean answer that addresses global demand for this kind of instant delivery, a demand that’s skyrocketed over the last decade.”
“After all,” Cliffton continued, “how is using the same 3,000-pound gas combustion vehicles smart fulfillment anymore? It’s slow, it’s expensive, and it’s terrible for our planet. Our new service, on the other hand, is changing that, and it will finally make deliveries how they should’ve been: Smooth, ultrafast, and convenient.”
Zipline plans to conduct even more high-volume flight tests this year in order to hone its platform; safety measures, niche commercial testing, etc. So later this year or in early 2024, be it an urgent prescription or pizza on a super busy Friday night, orders may arrive not by human drivers, but by Zip.
Edited by
Greg Tavarez
