While it will soon open a new Prime Air site in Tolleson, Arizona, and carry on with deliveries in other areas, Amazon.com Inc. has announced that it is closing its drone delivery services in Lockeford, California.
Under its trial service, Amazon Prime Air, consumers may order goods weighing up to five pounds and have one of its experimental drones deliver them in as little as thirty minutes.
Declaring Lockeford to be an “early testing zone” and announcing plans to add other sites in the future, the business introduced the service there in December 2022. It subsequently opened a second zone in College Station, Texas, and intends to carry on offering drone deliveries there as well.
Residents in the West Valley Phoenix metropolitan region would receive same-day delivery from the new Prime Air facility in Tolleson, the business said. Furthermore, it said that it will start more drone deliveries in Arizona later this year and in other places in 2025.
With an announcement of its intentions made in 2013, Amazon was among the first businesses in the world to investigate the potential of drone delivery services. Its founder and Chief Executive Jeff Bezos at the time estimated that the idea would take four to five years to come to fruition.
It spent years creating its drones, testing them as far away as the United Kingdom, before deciding on a U.S. launch in August 2020 after receiving clearance from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration.
While providing no reason for why it is closing the Lockeford Prime Air facility, Amazon did state that staff members there will be given other opportunities at other Prime Air locations. Low demand may have been a factor in the decision to close Prime Air in Lockeford. Though it had earlier set a goal of 10,000 drone deliveries by the end of 2023, Amazon revealed that by the middle of that year, it had only completed about 100.
Better success has been made by competitor drone delivery company Zipline International Inc., which earlier this month achieved the one million delivery mark.
The business stated that although the MK30 (pictured), its newest delivery drone, was revealed in November 2022, it is currently “undergoing testing,” which has delayed its plans. Lighter than current delivery drones, the MK30 can fly in light rain. Though that timetable seems less realistic now, it was supposed to launch operationally later this year.
Amazon apparently decided to build its own drone after trying out a number of other models and determining they were too unstable.