Amazon’s drones are finally going national.
The company’s autonomous aerial vehicles are set to deliver packages to nearly 500 cities and towns across the country by the end of this year, zipping items through the air to drop them in backyards and driveways as quickly as 30 minutes after ordering.
Amazon announced the plan Wednesday, describing it as a sixfold increase in its Prime Air footprint, reaching communities collectively representing tens of millions of customers.
It’s a milestone nearly 13 years in the making. Jeff Bezos unveiled Prime Air on 60 Minutes in December 2013, showing off a prototype to an astonished Charlie Rose and a skeptical public.
“I know this looks like science fiction — it’s not,” the Amazon founder said at the time.
Bezos acknowledged that it would take at least four or five years, optimistically, and that convincing the FAA the drones were safe would be one of the biggest hurdles. Amazon’s FAQ that night said it hoped the agency would have rules in place “as early as sometime in 2015.”
Both the technology and the regulations took far longer than the company expected.
Amazon said Wednesday morning that Prime Air will launch soon in the Chicago, Syracuse, Cleveland, Atlanta and Boise metro areas, with more communities to come later this year. The drones fly primarily over suburban areas, which allows them to avoid the tall buildings and crowded airspace that complicate flights over dense urban areas.
There’s no word yet on when or whether drone delivery will come to the Seattle area.
Amazon said the drones launch from two types of facilities: smaller same-day delivery sites and its larger robotic fulfillment centers. The mix is what lets Prime Air offer anywhere from tens of thousands to millions of items depending on the location, according to the company.
Nearly any item weighing 5 pounds or less and small enough to fit in a large shoebox is eligible for drone delivery. That translates into millions of products, as noted by Amazon CEO Andy Jassy in his annual letter to shareholders earlier this year. He wrote that Prime Air would carry “a much larger selection of items inside a half hour” than Amazon’s other fast-delivery options.
Drone delivery will be free for Prime members on orders of $50 or more. Prime orders below that carry a $2.99 fee, and customers without a membership pay $4.99.
Amazon’s reference to expanding to 500 cities and towns does not reflect the number of planned Amazon drone launch locations, but rather the number of municipalities that fall within delivery range of the planned hubs, each of which covers roughly 175 square miles.
The 30-minute delivery scenario is a best case. Most orders arrive around 60 minutes after checkout, Amazon said in its announcement.
Amazon isn’t the only company betting on drones. Amazon retail rival Walmart and Google parent Alphabet’s Wing have been building what they call the largest drone delivery network in the U.S., adding seven new markets in June including Phoenix, Philadelphia and the Bay Area. They plan to reach 270 stores and more than 40 million people by next year.
Local approvals remain a hurdle for delivery drones. Noise has been a recurring concern for residents near drone operations. Amazon says its drones are quieter than an idling delivery truck during drop-off and comparable to a window fan while in flight. A proposed federal rule that would more broadly allow flights beyond the pilot’s line of sight has not been finalized.
The Associated Press first reported on the expansion Tuesday afternoon in what appears to have been an inadvertent break of a news embargo, to which GeekWire had not agreed. Post updated Wednesday morning with details from the official announcement.