Amazon To Begin Prime Air Drone Deliveries In California After Years Of Trying
After nearly a decade in the works, Amazon has announced it will be starting its Prime Air drone delivery service in Lockeford, California, later this year.
The announcement comes as Walmart introduced same-day drone delivers for over four million households in Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Texas, Utah, and Virginia earlier this month.
In a press release, the company said it chose Lockeford as its launching ground due to the region’s historic links to the aviation industry. Back in the early 1900s, it was home to pioneer Weldon B. Cooke, who flew early versions of aircraft.
Now, over 100 years later, residents in the same place will be the first to experience free drone deliveries each day. Acting as a launchpad is an invaluable role for community, seeing as Amazon will use this as a test to scale its service to eventually reach customers all over the country.
“Lockeford residents will soon have access to one of the world’s leading delivery innovations,” said California State Assemblyman Heath Flora.
“It’s exciting that Amazon will be listening to the feedback of the San Joaquin County community to inform the future development of this technology,” he added.
Going forward, the brand hopes to fully build out a sophisticated network of drone operations that will no longer require visual observers, thus allowing deliveries to travel greater distances while being able to avoid other aircraft, people, birds, or obstacles.
“Since the inception of Prime Air, we have designed, built, and tested many drones. In fact, we’ve created more than two dozen prototypes,” revealed the corporation.
It’s now looking forward to trialing customer deliveries in real-world scenarios with its latest version.
