Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai Applauds Wing Aviation's Larger Drone That Can Be Adapted To Deliver Essentials Like Food, Medicine

Alphabet Inc-owned GOOG GOOGL drone delivery company Wing on Wednesday said that the company will be introducing a new aircraft with more payload capacity in the coming twelve months to deliver larger orders.

What Happened: The new aircraft can carry a payload of up to five pounds, twice that of the company’s existing fleet of commercially operational aircraft which carry only about 2.5 pounds of payload. Despite the capability to carry more, the new aircraft has the same round-trip range of 12 miles and the same speed of about 65 miles per hour. It is further expected to work with the company’s existing infrastructure and automation systems without demanding new ones, the company said in a blog.

“It's always been our vision to implement a multimodal drone delivery model, in the same way that ground delivery uses different vehicle sizes for different orders,” Wing CEO Adam Woodworth wrote in the blog, while adding that drone delivery is “not one-size-fits all.”

The company is eyeing deploying the new aircraft within the coming year in its service areas.

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Why It Matters: Wing has presently completed over 350,0000 deliveries across three continents. It analyzed its order trends to figure that while a majority of all orders in the U.S. required only one aircraft, 30% required two, mandating the need for an aircraft with more payload capacity.

With the new aircraft, Wing sees customers being able to bundle their orders better and receive them on a single trip.

“Great example of how Wing can adapt designs to get more food, medicine, and household essentials to people in one trip,” Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said in a post on X about the new aircraft.

Photo by World Economic Forum on Flickr

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