Will Drones Solve Last Mile Delivery? Not So Fast...

Drones won't fix last-mile delivery. The middle mile is where the opportunity is.

Jake Vander Ploeg founded The Good Drone Company, a Phoenix-based builder of hybrid-electric VTOL cargo drones. An electrical engineer by trade, he worked on autonomy at Boeing, SpaceX, and Apple. Today his team is flying in Africa while the U.S. writes the rules for Part 108.

The Good Drone Company says its cargo drones deliver 20x faster than ground and 20x cheaper than overnight express.

This is a paradigm shift.

In this episode:

- Why "high cost of downtime" industries like mining, oil and gas, energy, and agriculture are the first customers

- Why hybrid beats all-electric today, and how far batteries have to go

- What Zipline proved in Rwanda

- What Part 108 unlocks for cargo drones

- Why Colorado's mountain corridors are a perfect use case

- China's low altitude economy

- Boeing vs. SpaceX vs. Apple: three very different cultures

Jake's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakelvanderploeg/
The Good Drone Company: https://soargdc.com
Marble Institute of Technology: https://marbletech.us

Founders and Friends is a Marble Institute of Technology program. Conversations with the people building the Aerial Economy.

*Chapters*

00:00 Intro
00:52 20x faster, 20x cheaper
01:29 The real cost of air freight
03:47 Hub to hub over empty country
04:47 The Boeing road trip
06:41 High cost of downtime industries
07:50 Batteries, MEMS, and the hobbyists
10:59 Why Africa
12:04 Zipline and Rwanda
14:07 Why last mile doesn't work
16:54 The middle mile opportunity
19:21 Working with existing infrastructure
22:47 Part 108
26:31 Alaska, the Southwest, and search and rescue
27:49 Colorado: it's a trap
28:57 Building a U.S. startup overseas
36:22 China's low altitude economy
38:46 Staying commercial
43:19 Batteries are still 10x off
48:53 AI and the manufacturing problem
50:19 Inside Apple Special Projects
52:40 SpaceX and Starlink
53:49 Outro

#Drones #CargoDrones #AerialEconomy