Uber Will Soon Test Aerial Food Delivery in San Diego
The ride-share and tech company CEO said an aerial food delivery test program would begin in San Diego in the next few months.
Uber is ready to aerially deliver food to you. Well, not quite yet, and certainly not nationwide. As a result of Wednesday’s additions to the UAS Integration Pilot Program, the ride-share and tech company will initiate these new tests and provide service to San Diego residents exclusively in the next few months
According to Fortune, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said test subjects could expect delivery times between five to 30 minutes. “Push a button and get food on your doorstep,” he said. Khosrowshahi reminded an audience at the Uber Elevate conference in Los Angeles that the ride-hailing service has become the largest food delivery company on Earth.
If you’ll recall, the Department of Transportation chose 10 state, local, and tribal governments to band together with a series of companies such as Intel, FedEx, and Alphabet to test new unmanned aerial systems operations in territories across the country. Uber is one of those entities, and has chosen San Diego as its lab.
As for Uber’s shift from the pavement to the skies, Khosrowshahi claimed he only recently realized that the latter provides glaring opportunities for the future. “Uber can’t just be about the cars,” he said. “It has to be about mobility.” While it isn’t Uber itself that’s building the self-flying taxis of the future, they’ve partnered with entities like NASA to get the job done—aiming to reach final stages by 2020.
Passenger cars have rampantly become the next big thing in the drone industry, with competition steadily increasing over the past few years, and all corporate eyes ahead to the inevitable highway of the skies. With manned drones such as the Ehang 184 in China and the Y6S in England, and the UAS Integration Pilot Program fostering more substantial data and functional information, it absolutely feels like the passenger drone industry is about to expand even more. Hopefully, those of you living in San Diego can soon order a steak via drone and let us know how it tasted.