Autonomous drone delivery startup Zipline says it has made one million commercial deliveries to customers. It’s a feat that would have taken a human pilot 120 years of flying! In addition, the company has announced new partnerships with Panera Bread, Memorial Hermann Health System, and Jet’s Pizza starting in the greater Seattle, Houston, and Detroit metro areas respectively.
Zipline says its drones have now flown more than 70 million commercial autonomous miles across four continents and delivered more than 10 million products to customers. Interestingly, 70% of these deliveries have come in the last two years alone. The company is essentially making a commercial delivery every 70 seconds in multiple countries.
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Zipline got its start delivering medical supplies but has expanded to do more things like delivering stuff for Walmart in the US, helping farmers and animals in Africa, and food delivery in Japan.
Recent regulatory approvals are also helping Zipline to expand. In the coming months, Zipline will begin rolling out the new P2 delivery drone which has an on-board perception system for beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) commercial operations. The P2 is expected to serve more than 30 million people in 10 US states over the next few years.
“I believe that 1 million deliveries will be unremarkable in the near future as we reach a million deliveries in a year, in a month, in a day,” says Ryan Oksenhorn, cofounder of Zipline and head of software.
Coming to the new partnerships announced by the company, Panera is making order placement possible directly through Zipline’s app in the greater Seattle metro area. Memorial Hermann Health System, one of the largest not-for-profit health systems in Texas, will use Zipline to deliver specialty prescriptions and medical devices directly to patients’ homes, as well as to transport medicine, medical products, and lab samples between its facilities. And Jet’s Pizza will begin using Zipline to deliver orders starting in its home of Detroit.
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