Are you sure that the energy cost is lower for a delivery van? Fully loaded (though presumably uncommon for residential deliveries), a commercial van will carry 4 tons and have pretty poor gas mileage. Electric vans may help, but it's still quite a lot of weight to drive around.
The drones have no driver (thus lower margins and/or a richer Amazon, neither of which are necessarily good for inequality, though it does free up more humanity from mundane tasks like delivering parcels), and can be loaded quickly and automatically. The article mentions they can carry 5 lbs, which I suspect is enough to carry a few deliveries at once. As the article mentions, 80% of their sales are less than 5 lbs.
All that said, the noise pollution is going to be horrendous. The visual pollution I don't mind so much, as it _may_ allow cities to lower the number of cars on the road (fewer people driving to run errands), though it's definitely going to feel creepy and dystopian, especially if Amazon are the only ones running these things and there isn't _extremely_ strong privacy oversight.
The drones have no driver (thus lower margins and/or a richer Amazon, neither of which are necessarily good for inequality, though it does free up more humanity from mundane tasks like delivering parcels), and can be loaded quickly and automatically. The article mentions they can carry 5 lbs, which I suspect is enough to carry a few deliveries at once. As the article mentions, 80% of their sales are less than 5 lbs.
All that said, the noise pollution is going to be horrendous. The visual pollution I don't mind so much, as it _may_ allow cities to lower the number of cars on the road (fewer people driving to run errands), though it's definitely going to feel creepy and dystopian, especially if Amazon are the only ones running these things and there isn't _extremely_ strong privacy oversight.