A recent visit to Amazon’s overhauled drone delivery program in Arizona left me impressed by the drones, but skeptical that the public will welcome them.
Over the past few weeks, concerned New Jersey residents have craned their heads skyward to track the movements of what appeared to be mysterious drones overhead, concoct theories about their origins and strategize about how to get rid of them.
A few thousand miles away, just west of Phoenix, Amazon is on an ambitious quest to convince people that the 80-pound drones whirring over their houses not only are harmless but represent the exciting future of online shopping.
You may have heard about Amazon’s drones before. The company first teased them more than a decade ago, when Jeff Bezos went on “60 Minutes” to declare the start of Prime Air, an experimental drone delivery service that the company hoped would one day deliver millions of packages to customers in 30 minutes or less.
For Amazon addicts, the pitch was irresistible. Need a phone charger? Forgot your toothpaste on a work trip? Tap a button, Mr. Bezos said, and an autonomous drone would zoom through the sky to deliver it to you, in less time than it would take you to drive to the store.
That future didn’t arrive on schedule, however, and Mr. Bezos is now more focused on sending rockets to space. But Amazon hasn’t given up on drones. This week, I was invited along with my “Hard Fork” co-host, Casey Newton, to tour the facility where Amazon just launched the newest iteration of Prime Air, and see its new drones in action.
Our tour was awkwardly timed — smack-dab in the middle of a national panic over the drones hovering over New Jersey. (For what it’s worth, Amazon officials say the mystery drones aren’t theirs. Federal officials said this week that most of the reported sightings had turned out to be piloted planes and hobby drones, although some remain unexplained.)