Scalability
Round my area, Royal Mail have largely switched to electric vehicles. And what a difference to noise and, most especially, diesel exhaust - which can be very bad when they restart the engine multiple times even in our short road.
From that point of view, I'd very much appreciate one of these delivering rather than the diesel vehicles Amazon (and most others) use. But how would Amazon handle the sixty miles from their nearest depot to where I live? A local depot which employs people to transfer packages from vans or lorries to Scouts seems the only possibility. Which would require considerable numbers of transfer depots to cover even the urban areas of a country. With staff. And lots of Scouts so they can still deliver in a sensible time even at busy periods. And particularly so when they have to wait, possibly for many hours, for the customer to unload them.
So this seems feasible to use only in specific areas which match how they operate. No wonder Amazon are not expanding the project.
And I very much agree with those who prefer a brief chat with a human.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
