Technology
Uber Eats wants to deliver your food with drones
The feeding frenzy continues.
Uber Eats, already one of the most popular food delivery apps, wants to elevate the game. As it works now, drivers pick up your food from a restaurant, put it in their car, drive with the goods, and then ring your doorbell with a bag full of dinner.
But at the Uber Elevate Asia Pacific Expo in Japan this week, Uber unveiled a new delivery method: the drone. Uber’s drone team, known as Uber Elevate, will use what it’s learned from its flying car service, known as UberAir, to try to provide faster, cheaper, and more reliable food deliveries.
Uber is already talking with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration about UberAir, so Uber’s drone project would conceivably fit into those conversations. And Uber Elevate has tested some drone flights in San Diego, which has a pilot program for urban drone delivery in place.
Uber Eats has had a good year — its app has been downloaded more times than competitors on Android devices in the past year, according to a survey from SimilarWeb.
And Uber says it has grown its Eats platform to $6 billion in bookings across 293 cities globally, with most growth occurring in its Asia/Pacific market. In India and Japan, Uber Eats has made it to neighborhoods before ride-hailing services.
No word yet on when your Uber food deliveries will come at you through the clutches of a drone, but if Amazon Prime Air’s beleaguered dream of delivering your packages via drone is any indication, Uber Elevate could face a lot of scrutiny, pushback, and delays.
In the meantime, there’s always IBM’s recently revealed coffee-delivery drone patent to keep your drone dreams alive.
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s){if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;
n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window,
document,’script’,’https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js’);
fbq(‘init’, ‘1453039084979896’);
if (window.mashKit) {
mashKit.gdpr.trackerFactory(function() {
fbq(‘track’, “PageView”);
}).render();
}
-
Business6 days ago
UnitedHealth says Change hackers stole health data on ‘substantial proportion of people in America’
-
Business5 days ago
Tesla’s new growth plan is centered around mysterious cheaper models
-
Business7 days ago
Mood.camera is an iOS app that feels like using a retro analog camera
-
Business4 days ago
Xaira, an AI drug discovery startup, launches with a massive $1B, says it’s ‘ready’ to start developing drugs
-
Business5 days ago
UK probes Amazon and Microsoft over AI partnerships with Mistral, Anthropic, and Inflection
-
Entertainment7 days ago
Furious Watcher fans are blasting it as ‘greedy’ over paid subscription service
-
Business6 days ago
Two widow founders launch DayNew, a social platform for people dealing with grief and trauma
-
Entertainment5 days ago
Tesla’s in trouble. Is Elon Musk the problem?