DoorDash by Drone: Wing Starts Pilot Program in Australia

Alphabet’s Wing Launches Deliveries with DoorDash in Australia

by DRONELIFE Staff Writer Ian M. Crosby

Alphabet [NASDAQ:GOOGL] is one of the holdings in the AdvisorShares Drone Technology ETF [NYSE ARCA:UAV], the only ETF dedicated to the drone economy. For complete list of holdings click here.  The AdvisorShares Drone Technology ETF is a thematic investment strategy seeking to capture the growth opportunities in drones and autonomous vehicles (AV). AdvisorShares is a DRONELIFE sponsor.

Alphabet’s drone delivery company Wing announced that it is working towards opening its platform to third parties, enabling customers to access Wing’s drone delivery service through the use of third party apps.

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As a first step in this process, Wing is partnering with global on-demand delivery leader DoorDash for a pilot program based in Logan, Australia.

DoorDash by Drone

The pilot program will begin this week, enabling selected customers in the Logan area to order a variety of convenience and grocery items, pantry staples, snacks, and household essentials via the DoorDash App, which will then be delivered by a Wing drone in an average timeframe of 15 minutes or less. This pilot program will initially be made available to a small number of households, with plans to gradually expand availability in the coming months.

Wing has been working on this new integration for some time now, with the company believing that providing customers with access to Wing’s delivery service through a third party app will serve as another step towards its goal of realizing a highly integratable drone delivery service capable of rapidly scaling.

As such, the company has already begun making steps to transform its operations, relocating them closer to retailers to enable faster, simpler, and more affordable deployment. As of yet, Wing has established a drone delivery hub on the rooftop of a local shopping center in Australia, as well as its first home delivery service in Dallas. Additionally, the company recently announced that it will be expanding this model to Australia’s Gold Coast.

Wing views this new integration as the logical next step in its efforts to make drone delivery a plug-and-play option for a wider audience of businesses and consumers, regardless of which app they order with.

Read more about Wing:

• Alphabets Wing Reveals New Drone Prototype: Increasing Capacity for More Drone Deliveries
• Drone Delivery: Googles Project Wing Takes Off In Australia
• Wing Drone Delivery in Texas Starts This Week: Walgreens, Texas Health, EasyVet, and Ice Cream
• Wing Drone Delivery in Australia: One Drone Delivery Every 25 Seconds, Commercial Ops at Scale

Ian attended Dominican University of California, where he received a BA in English in 2019. With a lifelong passion for writing and storytelling and a keen interest in technology, he is now contributing to DroneLife as a staff writer.