The future of autonomous delivery starts now. And it starts in Tallinn, Estonia.
For those of you who have never been to Tallinn, it’s a stunning ancient city (the “Gem of the Baltics”) on the opposite side of the Gulf of Finland from Helsinki.
I once took a ferry between these two very nice cities and recall that, to the locals at least, the ferry’s most popular feature was its duty-free shop.
Estonia is actually an important, if quiet, player in emerging technologies. Skype, for example, is an Estonian company.
And this became apparent in the past week when ride-sharing and overall mobility-tech player Bolt (based in Estonia) announced a partnership with Starship Technologies (founded by two of Skype’s co-founders) to use the latter’s autonomous delivery vehicles to deliver groceries to consumers and the partnership will begin by delivering said goods to consumers in Tallinn.
As Bolt says in its announcement, “Starship delivery robots will begin delivering with Bolt Food in Tallinn as a pilot programme, working in tandem with courier partners.”
We presume if things go well, or if the inevitable bugs are sorted out during the pilot, this partnership will expand to other markets. Bolt has a lot of choices available. The company, founded in Tallinn in 2013 by then-19-year-old Markus Villig, operates in about 300 cities across 45 countries.
The case for this being the right time for autonomous delivery is being framed as a sustainability play, at least by Bolt and Starship.
It’s About Sustainability Stupid
It’s not because robots are cool. Or cheaper than people. Or so they say. Reducing or eliminating gig labor is the real reason, in the long term at least. Remember, at one point, Uber founder Travis Kalanick said this quiet part out loud. And Bolt and Uber are in essentially the same business.
“Bolt and Starship share very similar goals of promoting sustainability in local transport. In our case, we offer a convenient and on-demand autonomous delivery service, perfectly aligning with the mission of making cities more eco-friendly,” said Starship Technologies CEO Alastair Westgarth
Anyone who relies on legions of gig workers today dreams about someday replacing them with AI and/or robots (or drones). Each day we appear to be a step closer to this reality.
Where Are the Drones?
The notion of autonomous delivery (and while we are at it, autonomous taxis), has been around for a few years. Does anyone remember worrying legions of Amazon drones were going to be hovering over our homes any day now?
Well, the whole drone delivery thing has its own saga. Of course.
As CNBC reported in May, Amazon’s eyes have been bigger than its stomach when it comes to delivering packages (of up to 5 lbs.) via drone.
CNBC says Amazon has delivered a meager 100 packages via drone so far this year (in two small test markets). It projected 10,000 such deliveries by the end of this year.
Amazon may not have believed its own prediction, as it let go of many of Amazon Air’s employees soon after making this pledge.
Two other players in autonomous air delivery, Google and Walmart, seem to have fared better than Amazon.
For example, CNBC reports that Google’s drone subsidiary Wing has made more than 300,000 deliveries via a partnership with Walgreens.
Walmart started testing drone deliveries in 2020 and the following year it invested in DroneUp, which as you might guess, does drone delivery. According to a post from earlier this year, Walmart has set up drone delivery hubs in 36 stores. It partners with DroneUp, Zipline, and Flytrex for these deliveries.
This week we learned that Zipline has partnered with GNC to use drones to deliver supplements and protein powder to consumers in Salt Lake City who order online.
Seems like it’s time for Amazon, which first surfaced this idea, to step up.
