Where is my Cargo Drone?

We are all excited about the upcoming revolution in aviation. Namely: the autonomous electric flight! Because, deep in our hearts, we all want to fly in air-cars just like the Jetsons do! And this seems to be the main driver behind a multi-billion-dollar market.

But a close examination of existing concepts shows that while technological shortcomings and regulatory bottlenecks are being addressed properly, operational concepts are not receiving the attention they deserve.

While it was more than obvious that cargo ops would lead the way[1] into the Urban Air Mobility, only 8% of revealed concepts, 10% of demonstrators and 8% of prototypes and none of the series production vehicles today are “cargo-drones” according to Aviation Week’s August 2020 analysis of Vertical Flight Society’s eVTOL Directory.

And when we are talking about “cargo-drones”, we are NOT talking about SMALL drones[2] carrying one-package-at-a-time. The cargo-drones in consideration are 100 – 300 kg payload class vehicles. (Volocopter, Boeing, Pipistrel, etc.)

But operational vise, none of the existing concepts fully address the intricacies of “courier, express and parcel” deliveries in urban environments. eVTOL, by definition, has a potential to fill a need at the “last mile” [3] of parcel delivery chain. And with today’s technologies it is impossible to fully eliminate the human element especially at the “last yard” [4]. Therefore, last mile deliveries require a bi-modal (or multi-modal) solution.

This means that it is not practical to deliver the parcel in one hop from “urban consolidation hub” to the customer’s backyard, skipping the “inner city hubs”. Instead, the solution lies at skipping the “urban consolidation hubs” altogether, and fly the parcel in volumes better comparable to a delivery truck (i.e. ~ 500 kg payloads) directly to “inner city hubs” from where small manned electric vehicles take over. Do not forget that the solution requires to address undelivered parcels, as well.

In a network stretched over 50 kms, such a multi-modal solution, will prevail over existing approaches.

Be it manned or unmanned, Cargo eVTOL vehicles (C-eVTOLs, if you like), when employed in such a scenario would have the advantage of flying to-and-from fixed points (i.e. from a Regional Logistic Hub to an Inner City Hub) over predetermined routes[5] which would considerably ease the air traffic control problem.

In summary, a “delivery drone” capable of transporting around 500 kg cargo in one-go, optimized to land at backyards of Inner City Hubs, flying at speeds (at least) twice of the delivery vans over direct routes considerably shorter than ground ones, operating autonomously and uninterrupted almost for the whole day is an exceptional tool for Logistic Service Providers trying hard to add value to rapid/ same-day delivery segment of their shipments.

With clear advantages to test and validate UAM concepts, I hope this segment of the market would be better focused to pave the way for future air-taxis, like Jetsons ride.

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[1] June 2019 Deloitte Report titled “Change is in the air - The elevated future of mobility: What’s next on the horizon?” by Robin Lineberger, Aijaz Hussain, Vincent Rutgers.

[2] Small cargo drone concepts like that of Amazon’s, are not the future of autonomous aerial parcel delivery operations in urban areas because they need to be deployed in huge numbers to match the daily volume of parcel deliveries, which would paint the sky black and rapidly saturate any air traffic control system, if not the nervous systems of citizens first.

[3] A typical package’s journey can be broken down into three phases: the first mile, middle mile and last mile. While the first mile of an item’s trip usually takes it from a production facility to a warehouse, and the middle mile then takes it from that warehouse to a distribution hub (usually including the long haul that accounts for most of the actual distance), the last mile is where large shipments of goods atomize into hundreds or thousands of individual deliveries, each with its own route, location, and timing.

[4] The last portion of the last mile, where the customer actually receives the parcel.

[5] Although flying to-and-from predetermined locations is also valid for air-taxi (or better put: air-metro) operations, the economical volume cannot be reached unless air-taxis load-and-unload their passengers at any point in the city, like ground-taxis do. And there exists a huge social barrier in front of that.