Hi! If anyone in this group is seeking a role within the AV industry, we have openings at Avride in Texas (several engineering and driving operations roles.) Feel free to message me here for more info, connect with me on Linked (Bonny Hannah) or view and apply to job postings here: Avride Careers
The drone delivery industry in 2026 has essentially sorted into two tiers, and the dividing line is simpler than most analysis makes it: how much does your aircraft weigh when something goes wrong?
Zipline's P2 and Wing's delivery drones weigh between 10 and 40 pounds. Amazon's MK30 has a maximum takeoff weight of 83 pounds. When a 15-pound drone has a problem, it's an inconvenience. When an 83-pound drone hits an apartment building at speed, people smell smoke and watch propeller fragments fall to the sidewalk. That's not a metaphor — that's what happened in Richardson, Texas in February 2026. Five days later, Amazon launched in Kansas City.
The incident catalog for Amazon Prime Air since resuming operations in April 2025 is worth laying out because the pattern tells you something about how differently the FAA treats operators at different safety profiles. A controlled landing at an Arizona apartment complex in May. A package dropped into a swimming pool in July. Two drones crashing into a construction crane in Tolleson in October — sparking a fire and hazmat response. A drone landing five feet from a resident checking his mailbox. A severed internet cable during ascent in Waco in November. The apartment building crash in Richardson in February 2026. Multiple FAA and NTSB investigations opened. Amazon resumed flights within 48 hours of the crane incident and launched new markets days after the apartment crash.
Compare that to how the FAA treats Part 107 operators — fines reaching $36,770 for a single violation, license suspensions for flying near stadiums. Amazon operates under Part 135 air carrier certification with different oversight mechanisms, but the optics of multiple federal investigations in one year while new markets keep launching on schedule are hard to ignore.
Internal cost projections reported in late 2024 showed Amazon spending roughly $63 per delivery against customer pricing of $4.99 to $9.99. Amazon can absorb that because it's Amazon. As of February 2026, total Prime Air deliveries sit at around 16,000 across operations in Texas, Michigan, Arizona, Florida, and Kansas.
Meanwhile, Zipline hit 2 million commercial deliveries in January 2026, has flown over 125 million autonomous miles with zero serious injuries, raised over $600 million in January 2026 (valuation now $7.6 billion), holds BVLOS authorization across all 50 states, and was producing a new drone every hour at its manufacturing facility by end of 2025. The company is expanding to Houston and Phoenix in early 2026. Its safety architecture includes acoustic detect-and-avoid with microphone arrays that can hear other aircraft up to two miles away and 500+ safety checks per second during every flight. The P2 platform uses a tether system that keeps the main aircraft at 300 feet while lowering a smaller delivery droid to the doorstep.
Wing, Alphabet's subsidiary, has now passed 750,000 deliveries and covers a service area reaching over 2 million customers across Houston, Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, Charlotte, and — as of March 2026 — the San Francisco Bay Area. In DFW and Metro Atlanta, the top 25% of customers order three times per week. Delivery volume tripled in the second half of 2025 compared to the first half. Wing extended operating hours to 9 AM through 9 PM in Charlotte and DFW with FAA approval. The 150-store Walmart expansion announced in January 2026 adds Los Angeles, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Miami to the pipeline.
The underlying regulatory question is Part 108 — the proposed rulemaking that would create a permanent, standardized framework for routine BVLOS operations instead of the current waiver-by-waiver system. It was announced in August 2025 and is still working through the process. Until it's codified, expansion pace is gated by regulatory bandwidth rather than technological capability. The FAA recently approved Wing and Zipline to operate simultaneously over the same DFW suburbs without visual observers — the first time that's happened — which suggests the regulatory direction is toward enabling multi-operator airspace, even if the formal rule isn't done yet.
The honest trajectory for drone delivery isn't the one on any company's investor deck. It's not 500 million deliveries by 2030. It's a specific tool for specific use cases — medical supplies in areas with poor road infrastructure, urgent small-package delivery in suburban markets, high-frequency low-weight consumer goods in neighborhoods where the economics and approvals align. Zipline's origin story is instructive: the company that actually scaled drone delivery built its operation delivering blood and vaccines in Rwanda and Ghana, not same-day retail in suburban Texas. The safety record, the operational discipline, and the regulatory credibility all came from solving a genuinely hard logistics problem where the alternative was people dying because roads were washed out.
Longer analysis covering the full regulatory landscape, the engineering constraints (noise, weather, payload limits, airspace integration), and why the companies scaling carefully are outperforming the one scaling fastest:
https://unteachablecourses.com/drone-delivery-2026/
Question for this community: how much of Amazon's aggressive expansion schedule is driven by the belief that first-mover market presence matters more than safety record, and how much risk does that create for the broader industry if a serious incident involving a bystander triggers a regulatory clampdown that affects operators who haven't had problems?
Hey everyone,
I’ve got an interview coming up with Zoox for an Autonomy Test Specialist role, and the work seems heavily around PUDO/depot scenarios, simulation scene creation, vehicle testing, and first-pass triage.
From the JD, it looks like a mix of simulation + on-road testing + debugging issues across perception/planning/control.
For anyone in AV testing — what kind of questions should I expect in this kind of role?
Do they usually dive into scenario design, triage/debugging logs, or more system-level understanding of autonomy stacks?
Also, how detailed do they expect you to go when explaining test workflows or issue investigation?
Would really appreciate any insights. Thanks!
Last week my father asked me to help find parts for our old car. We went to a local auto shop but they did not have everything we needed. The shopkeeper said we might have to wait many days. My father looked worried because he wanted the car fixed soon. Then I told him we should check online. I opened alibaba and some other online marketplaces and searched for Nissen automotive parts. I was surprised to see so many options. Some parts looked simple and some looked very strong and new. There were radiators and filters and small engine parts too. My brother joined us and said the pictures looked clear and helpful. The prices were also very different. Some were cheap and some were more expensive but looked better quality. Online shopping made it easy to compare parts and read details. In local shops we only saw a few items and not much choice. My father liked that we could find the exact part for our car model.
Do you think buying automotive parts online is safe or is it better to get them from local shops? How do you know if the part will really fit your car?