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It's a tradeoff. The problems with fixed wing are difficulties maneuvering in crowded low-altitude urban airspace, energy and space required for takeoff, higher speed and mass thus force of impact, and at the point of delivery there's no easy way to hover without going hybrid and the alternative of simply dropping people's goods to the ground with parachutes doesn't result in an ideal delivery experience. This is often fudged with extra packaging, which is environmentally irresponsible as well as spatially constraining for payloads on already limited airframes. Copters are roughly superior in all these regards, but can't go very far due to energy inefficiency and tend to be noisier. I think copters will dominate urban/precision/high value or theft risk, and locally sourced retail such as food, whereas fixed wing will be suburban/semi-rural/rural/industrial/low precision/low value or theft risk, and further sources retail such as hardware, commercial and industrial supplies. It's been somewhat amusing to see the huge amount of money in the space and watch the strategic directions of Amazon Prime Air (hexacopter; 5lbs max payload; 'drop' strategy), Google Wing (hybrid + 'lower on a cord' strategy; numerous designs), Manna (quadcopter), Zipline (fixed wing + 'parachute' strategy; larger payload).



I agree with your breakdown of which model dominates which segments, though I expect that in-city drone never takes off except for extremely time sensitive/high value missions (organ delivery or something similarly extreme) because figuring out things like where to land tons of drones in downtown Manhattan just so I can get shake shack slightly faster without leaving my apt. My bet is that drone delivery will really shine when it provides next day for areas that have week-long lead times which is going to have to be fixed wing (or a really good hybrid) because of the ranges inherently involved.

I'm a huge fan of Zipline, I imagine they'll refine the parachute element of the operation.




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