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Nearly a decade after announcing grand plans for 30-minute drone delivery of items up to 5 pounds, Amazon told CNBC it’s now completed just 100 deliveries in two small U.S. markets.

Compare that number with internal projections from January for 10,000 deliveries by the end of this year, according to a video address in early 2023. Days after Amazon set its target, a significant number of Prime Air workers were let go as part of the largest round of layoffs in company history

Now, Amazon’s 2023 goals have changed, the company said, pointing to regulatory hurdles put in place by the Federal Aviation Administration.

“While the FAA broadened Prime Air’s authority to conduct drone deliveries to include sites in California and Texas, the phased process for expanding our service areas is taking longer than we anticipated,” said Av Zammit, an Amazon spokesperson.

CNBC went to Lockeford, California, a 4,000-person town and one of the two U.S. markets where the company’s drone program is operating. Amazon said it started drone deliveries there in December, but there was no apparent aerial activity at the former concrete manufacturing warehouse that now serves as the unit’s local hub.

“I would love to see the drones flying around. I can’t wait,” said Ken Thomas, who co-owns a nearby deli that’s served lunch to some Amazon employees. “I haven’t seen any yet.”

Thomas added, “One guy said they had 14 customers signed up, which seems kind of low to me.”

Amazon said thousands of people “have expressed interest” in the program and that the company is “working with each one of them to make this a reality.”

Company employees previously told CNBC that the drones are only delivering to two homes in Lockeford, located next door to each other less than a mile from the warehouse. The employees asked to remain anonymous because they weren’t authorized to speak on the matter.

Main Street of Lockeford, California, on April 14, 2023. The 4,000-person town is one of two small markets where Amazon started gradual drone deliveries in December 2022.

Katie Tarasov

But where Amazon has stalled, other companies’ drone programs have seen greater traction, particularly those that started outside of the regulatory confines of the U.S.

CNBC visited Wing, a subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet, at a drone test facility in Hollister, California. At one point, there were 37 drones in the air at once making demo deliveries.

Wing CEO Adam Woodworth said it’s made 330,000 deliveries. While thousands of those have been for partners such as Walgreens in Virginia and Texas, the company primarily delivers in Australia, where it brings orders from DoorDash and the supermarket Coles to homes in more than 50 suburbs. 

“The service area that we cover there is between 70,000 and 100,000 people and it’s a relatively sort of geographically constrained location,” Woodworth said. “If you look at metrics from last year, we were seeing on the order of about 1,000-plus deliveries a day to that sort of one snapshot of the planet.”

Wing CEO Adam Woodworth shows the Alphabet company’s delivery drone to CNBC’s Katie Tarasov on April 25, 2023, in Hollister, California.

Andrew Evers

CNBC also got a glimpse of Walmart drone deliveries in its home state of Arkansas, with partner Zipline, which recently announced its fixed-wing aircraft has made 600,000 commercial deliveries, largely of medical supplies in Africa. In March, Zipline unveiled a far different model that lowers a “droid” to the ground by a tether.

A growing list of companies, including Sweetgreen and nutrition retailer GNC, have signed up to deliver with the new drone when it’s scheduled to come online in 2024.

“We operate in three states: North Carolina, Arkansas and Utah,” said Zipline CEO Keller Rinaudo Cliffton. “For some of the families in those states that we serve day in and day out, not only is drone delivery a thing, not only is it possible, it’s also now boring.”

Brandey Oliver, a Zipline customer in Pea Ridge, Arkansas, said she likes the services because they’re secure.

“If we’re not here and we get a delivery, nobody has access to our backyard,” said Oliver, who lives about 10 miles from Walmart’s headquarters in Bentonville. “It really helps in emissions, and global warming has me worried. So I like it that no delivery cars are used.”

DroneUp is another Walmart partner with financial backing from the retailer. CEO Tom Walker said its drones have made more than 110,000 deliveries in the U.S. DroneUp cut some jobs this week, in a shift to focus more on consumer delivery and away from enterprise services such as construction and real estate monitoring.

“We have 34 locations operating in six states today, and we’re delivering in less than 30 minutes,” Walker said. “The routes are designed to minimize flight over people, minimize flight over moving vehicles, and it chooses the optimum route both from a safety standpoint, but from an efficiency standpoint.”

Walmart said it made more than 6,000 drone deliveries across seven states in 2022 with DroneUp, Zipline and a third partner, Flytrex.

‘Most complex airspace in the world’

Reese Mozer has been in the drone industry for 14 years and remembers when Amazon’s then-CEO Jeff Bezos first announced Prime Air drone delivery on CBS’ “60 Minutes” in December 2013. 

“Those of us who were in the industry at that time could foresee many of the challenges that were coming to actually fulfill that vision,” said Mozer, now president of Ondas Holdings, which owns several drone companies such as Airobotics. “You know, delivering packages via drone is a very complicated problem because what we’re talking about is theoretically thousands of autonomous drones carrying packages over people’s heads, avoiding structures, avoiding other air traffic. And this is a particularly difficult problem in the United States because we have the busiest and most complex airspace in the world.”

In 2020, Amazon brought in former Boeing executive David Carbon to lead Prime Air. He announced the program’s first official deliveries on LinkedIn on Christmas Eve 2022. 

“It’s actually not that hard to deliver a package via drone,” Carbon said at an Amazon event in November. “It’s a very different problem space to design, build, certify and operate an autonomous safety-critical system that can operate over densely populated environments within the national airspace.”

Safety, Amazon said, remains its top priority. There have been multiple crashes at Amazon’s test site in Pendleton, Oregon, including one in 2021 that sparked a 20-acre brush fire. In a statement, Amazon said that Pendleton is “a closed testing facility where the intent is to learn the limits of our technology” and that it’s “never had an incident during an actual customer delivery flight.”

Amazon’s drone design has evolved significantly over the years. It started as a vertical lifting “octocopter” with eight exposed rotors, and then moved to a design with four large enclosed rotors. Then came a version that could take off vertically and fly forward like a plane.

The latest design was first unveiled in 2019. It’s now on its second iteration: the MK27-2, which is about 5.5 feet wide and weighs about 80 pounds. In an interview in November, Prime Air’s Calsee Hendrickson, who leads product and program management, said the technology onboard for safety features is what makes the MK27-2 bigger.

“If the drone encounters another aircraft when it’s flying, it’ll fly around that other aircraft,” Hendrickson said. “If when it gets to its delivery location, your dog runs underneath the drone, we won’t deliver the package.”

Amazon’s VP of Prime Air David Carbon showcased the current MK27-2 drone in Westborough, Massachusetts, on Nov. 10, 2022.

Erin Black

The FAA takes these types of safety features into consideration when companies such as Amazon apply for Part 135 air carrier certification, which allows drones to make commercial deliveries. Only five drone operators have been granted such certification: Wing and UPS in 2019, Amazon in 2020, Zipline in 2022, and Flytrex partner Causey Aviation Unmanned in 2023.

But there are multiple levels of Part 135 clearance. Prime Air drones, along with most other delivery drones, operate with a number of federal exemptions that greatly restrict where and how they can fly. For example, most delivery drones have to avoid active roadways and people. The FAA also greatly limits operations of drones beyond the visual line of sight of an observer. Beyond visual line of sight, or BVLOS, while meant to ensure a human can steer away from other aircraft that could cause a crash, is also perhaps the biggest current obstacle to drone delivery scalability.

When asked how many of Wing’s resources were going toward BVLOS, Woodworth said, “I would say all, right?” He added, “Otherwise, what’s the point of using an airplane?”

Introduced in February, the Increasing Competitiveness for American Drones Act of 2023 would streamline the BVLOS approvals process. For now, the restriction often means drones can fly only one or two miles from the takeoff spot and require extra people to watch each flight.

“That person is getting paid to stand there, watch that drone, and that all factors into the cost,” said Jeremiah Karpowicz, editorial director of Commercial UAV News. “Very quickly you see that’s not going to make sense.”

One way to get FAA clearance for BVLOS is with a “detect and avoid” system, or what Amazon calls sense-and-avoid. The idea is to identify moving objects such as other aircraft, people and pets, and static objects such as a chimney or a clothesline, and automatically steer clear of them. These systems often use cameras, which make it tough to operate in cloudy conditions or at night.

Zipline uses microphones to listen for and automatically avoid other aircraft. The FAA recently certified Zipline’s detect and avoid system so its drones can fly beyond visual line of sight and over populated areas.

“Zipline achieved 40 million commercial autonomous miles with zero human safety incidents before we sought certification in the U.S.,” Rinaudo Cliffton said.

In late 2021, Amazon wrote to the FAA about the safety features on the MK27-2 in hopes the regulator would remove some restrictions. But a year later, the FAA declined Amazon’s request, saying the company didn’t provide sufficient data to show the MK27-2 could operate safely over people, roads or structures.

Amazon moved forward anyway, though gradually, in Lockeford and in College Station, Texas. Amazon said the two markets were chosen because of their demographics and topography

“The FAA cares about two things,” Mozer said. “They care about you colliding with another aircraft and they care about you hurting someone on the ground. So if you are in a less populated area, that means there’s less people on the ground, less chance for injury. And there’s also probably just less air traffic.”

‘Horses are skittish’

Aside from clearing FAA hurdles, public acceptance remains a big obstacle facing the whole industry.

“The biggest public pushback is: What is that drone doing? It’s probably spying on me,” said Karpowicz.

In Lockeford, Thomas said that fear could cause problems.

“I did think some people might try to shoot it down,” he said.

All the drone companies we interviewed said their cameras don’t record or, if they do, the video isn’t made available to operators.

“The cameras on our aircraft are just for navigation,” said Wing’s Woodworth. “They just look straight down. They can’t move around and there’s no feedback to the operators, so they’re just used to help the plane figure out where it is.”

Some residents also worry the noise of drones will change the quiet rural feel of Lockeford.

“There’s a field with cows in it, and that’s just down the street from the Amazon warehouse,” Thomas said. “I don’t know if the cows will be bothered by the drones or not. Horses might be, though. Horses are skittish.”

Prime Air drones are not expected to exceed 58 decibels, according to an FAA assessment, about the noise level of an outdoor air conditioning unit. Woodworth said Wing’s drones stay under 55 decibels at cruising altitude. Zipline said its coming P2 model is even quieter.

“People completely hate the way that quadcopters and octocopters sound,” Rinaudo Cliffton said. “It’s super annoying. It sounds like an angry swarm of bees and there is zero chance that communities are going to accept that kind of an experience scaling up and becoming something that you have to listen to multiple times a day.”

For some companies, weather remains another hindrance to reliable delivery. DroneUp had to cancel flights due to wind on the day we visited the company in Arkansas. Earlier that morning, Zipline made two deliveries.

A drone operator loads a Walmart package into Zipline’s P1 fixed-wing drone for delivery to a customer home in Pea Ridge, Arkansas, on March 30, 2023.

Bunee Tomlinson

“We fly in really crazy rain storms, lightning storms, dust storms,” Rinaudo Cliffton said. “We fly in wind that is so strong that sometimes the aircraft is actually moving backwards relative to the ground. That is a gigantic engineering challenge. It’s taken us seven years of hardening every part of the system.”

Wing said its drones can operate in sustained winds above 20 knots and moderate rain. Amazon said the MK27-2 flies in clear, dry weather and can handle sustained winds up to 14 knots. 

Now Amazon is working on its next model, the MK30, meant to better handle high temperatures and rain and to fly further. It’s also supposed to be lighter, smaller and half as loud.

But user demand remains the big question.

“I’m still trying to figure out what exactly the benefit or the perk of the drone program would be,” said Audrey Tankersley, who was having lunch in Lockeford at Thomas’ deli the day of our visit.

Customers in Lockeford and College Station told CNBC that Amazon incentivizes them to order drone deliveries by offering them gift cards. Amazon said it was consumer demand that drove the program from the start.

“They’re excited about this,” Hendrickson said. “And that’s what Amazon does: We listen to our customers and then we work backwards to design the most efficient service that we can.”

It’s a challenging time for the market, as regulation and a slowing economy forced some downsizing and delayed plans. But those on the inside remain optimistic.

“I wish everybody else in the space the best luck,” Woodworth said. “Because I want the space to exist.”

Watch the video to learn more about how Amazon fell behind in drone delivery: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2023/05/17/at-100-deliveries-amazon-drones-fall-far-behind-google-and-walmart.html

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Xiaomi delivers record cars in March as winners emerge in China’s EV race

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Xiaomi delivers record cars in March as winners emerge in China's EV race

A Xiaomi store in Shanghai, China, on March 16, 2025.

Qilai Shen/Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Chinese electric carmakers Xiaomi, Xpeng and Leapmotor each delivered nearly 30,000 or more cars in March, roughly twice several of their fellow startup competitors.

It’s a sign of how some automakers are pulling ahead, while BYD remains the market leader by far.

Xiaomi delivered a record number of electric vehicles in March, exceeding 29,000 units, the company announced on social media. That topped its prior run of delivering more than 20,000 vehicles in each of the past five months.

The SU7, Xiaomi’s flagship model, was involved in a crash on a highway on Tuesday that left three dead. The automaker on Tuesday afternoon released a statement on Chinese social media that the vehicle was in navigation on autopilot mode before the accident.

Based on preliminary information, the road was obstructed because of construction. The driver took control of the car but collided with construction infrastructure. Xiaomi added in the release that investigations were underway.

That came two weeks after the automaker announced on March 18 its goal to deliver 350,000 vehicles this year. There are also talks of the automaker expanding its second EV factory in Beijing to meet demand, Bloomberg reported on March 18. Xiaomi did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

Its competitor Xpeng in March delivered 33,205 vehicles, the fifth consecutive month it has delivered over 30,000 units per month and reflecting a 268% surge in deliveries from the same month last year. March is also the fifth consecutive month the company has delivered over 15,000 units of the Mona M03.

Leapmotor delivered 37,095 vehicles, reflecting a 154% year-over-year growth. The Stellantis-owned automaker last month launched U.K. sales of two electric vehicle models, the T03 and the C10.

Li Auto delivered 36,674 vehicles in March, a 26.5% year-over-year increase, but fewer than every month in the second half of 2024. The company’s cars had gained early traction with Chinese consumers since most come with a fuel tank for charging the vehicle’s battery, reducing anxiety about driving range.

Tesla takes two of three top spots in China's most popular EV list

BYD sold 371,419 passenger vehicles in March, reflecting a year-over-year growth of 57.9%. Its overseas sales volume also hit a record high of 72,723 units in March.

In the same month, the automaker unveiled its “Super e-Platform” technology, which boasts 400 kilometers (roughly 249 miles) of range with five minutes of charging. The company in February also announced that it was integrating DeepSeek artificial intelligence to develop “DiPilot,” its advanced driver-assistance system.

Across the board, major companies across China’s electric car industry reported deliveries rose last month, indicating a pick-up in demand from the seasonally soft first two months of the year.

U.S. automaker Tesla sold 78,828 electric vehicles in China in March, marking a 11.5% year-over-year decline in growth.

Other Chinese carmakers saw growth in deliveries but some still struggled to break through the 20,000-unit mark.  

Nio delivered 15,039 vehicles, a 26.7% year-over-year growth, but well below the number of cars delivered in the months of May to December last year. Nio-owned Onvo, which markets its electric vehicles as family-oriented, in March recorded 15,039 units in deliveries.

Geely-owned Zeekr delivered 15,422 vehicles in March, increasing by 18.5% year over year. The company last month announced its rollout of free advanced driver-assistance technology to local customers in a bid to compete in the market.

Aito, as of April 2, has not published its delivery numbers for March. The automaker, which uses Huawei tech in its vehicles, on social media had reported monthly deliveries of 34,987 and 21,517 in January and February, respectively.

Quarterly performance

On a first-quarter basis, BYD remained in the lead with 986,098 vehicles sold. The automaker, which overtook Tesla in annual sales last year, surpassed the U.S. EV giant in battery electric vehicles sales this quarter.

Tesla sold 172,754 vehicles in China in the first quarter this year, according to monthly delivery numbers published by the China Passenger Car Association.

Xpeng also reported strong growth, with a total of 94,008 vehicles delivered in the quarter ending in March, reflecting a 331% year-over-year growth.

Leapmotor saw quarterly deliveries more than double to 87,552 units from 33,410 units the same period in 2024, according to publicly available numbers the company published.

However, Li Auto and Nio reported weaker growth than their competitors in the first quarter of the year.

Nio saw 42,094 vehicles delivered in the three months ended March 2025, an increase of 40.1% year over year. Li Auto saw a slower year-over-year growth of 15.5%, with a total of 92,864 vehicles delivered.

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De minimis trade loophole that boosted Chinese online retailers to end May 2

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De minimis trade loophole that boosted Chinese online retailers to end May 2

A driver for an independent contractor to FedEx delivers packages on Cyber Monday in New York, US, on Monday, Nov. 27, 2023.

Stephanie Keith | Bloomberg | Getty Images

President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order shutting the de minimis trade loophole, effective May 2.

Trump in February abruptly ended the de minimis trade exemption, which allows shipments worth less than $800 to enter the U.S. duty-free. The order overwhelmed U.S. Customs and Border Protection employees and caused the U.S. Postal Service to temporarily halt packages from China and Hong Kong. Within days of its announcement, Trump reversed course and delayed the cancellation of the provision.

Wednesday’s announcement, which came alongside a set of sweeping new tariffs, gives customs officials, retailers and logistics companies more time to prepare. Goods that qualify under the de minimis exemption will be subject to a duty of either 30% of their value, or $25 per item. That rate will increase to $50 per item on June 1, the White House said.

Use of the de minimis provision has exploded in recent years as shoppers flock to Chinese e-commerce companies Temu and Shein, which offer ultra-low cost apparel, electronics and other items. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection has said it processed more than 1.3 billion de minimis shipments in 2024, up from over 1 billion shipments in 2023.

Critics of the provision say it provides an unfair advantage to Chinese e-commerce companies and creates an influx of packages that are “subject to minimal documentation and inspection,” raising concerns around counterfeit and unsafe goods.

The Trump administration has sought to close the loophole over concerns that it facilitates shipments of fentanyl and other illicit substances on the claims that the packages are less likely to be inspected by customs agents.

Temu and Shein have taken steps to grow their operations in the U.S. as the de minimis loophole has come under greater scrutiny. After onboarding sellers with inventory in U.S. warehouses, Temu recently began steering shoppers to those items on its website, allowing it to speed up deliveries. Shein opened distribution centers in states including Illinois and California in 2022, and a supply chain hub in Seattle last year.

WATCH: President Trump signs executive orders for reciprocal tariffs

Pres. Trump signs executive orders for reciprocal tariffs

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Apple leads a drop in tech stocks after Trump tariff announcement

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 Apple leads a drop in tech stocks after Trump tariff announcement

Apple CEO Tim Cook, center, watches during the inauguration ceremonies for President Donald Trump, right, and Vice President JD Vance, left, in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Jan. 20, 2025.

Shawn Thew | Afp | Getty Images

Apple slid more than 6% in late trading Wednesday and led a broader decline in tech stocks after President Donald Trump announced new tariffs of between 10% and 49% on imported goods.

The majority of Apple’s revenue comes from devices manufactured primarily in China and a handful of other Asian countries. Nvidia, which manufactures new chips in Taiwan and assembles its artificial intelligence systems in Mexico and elsewhere, fell about 4%, while electric vehicle company Tesla dropped 4.5%.

Across the rest of the megacap universe, Alphabet, Amazon and Meta all dropped between 2.5% and 5%, and Microsoft was down by almost 2%.

If Apple’s postmarket loss is matched in regular trading Thursday, it would be the steepest decline for the stock since September 2020.

Trump on Wednesday afternoon said the new taxes on imported goods would be a “declaration of economic independence” for the country. He announced a 10% blanket tariff on all imports, and higher duties for specific countries, including 34% for China, 20% for European nations, and 24% for Japanese imports, based on what tariffs they charge on U.S. exports, Trump said.

“We will supercharge our domestic industrial base, we will pry open foreign markets and break down foreign trade barriers,” Trump said during his speech. “Ultimately, more production at home will mean stronger competition and lower prices for consumers.”

Stocks broadly got hit by Trump’s announcements. An exchange-traded fund tracking the S&P 500 slid 2.8%, while an ETF following the Nasdaq 100 lost more than 3%.

During his speech, Trump praised Apple, Meta, and Nvidia for spending money and investing in the United States.

“Apple is going to spend $500 billion, they never spent money like that here,” Trump said. “They’re going to build their plants here.”

The Nasdaq just wrapped up its worst quarter since 2022, dropping 10% in the first three months of the year, though the tech-heavy index rose in each of the first two days of the second quarter.

WATCH: President Trump signs executive orders for reciprocal tariffs

Pres. Trump signs executive orders for reciprocal tariffs

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