Former Top Gear co-host Jeremy Clarkson is helping Amazon push its latest plan to dominate online shopping- delivery drones. The drone, called “Amazon Prime Air”, will deliver packages up to 2.5kg in 30 minutes or less.
Amazon Prime Air will will fly under 121 metres and weighs less than 24 kg. According to Amazon press release: “Prime Air vehicles will take advantage of sophisticated ‘sense and avoid’ technology, as well as a high degree of automation, to safely operate beyond the line of sight to distances of 10 miles or more”.
Amazon has Prime Air development centers in the United States, the United Kingdom and Israel.
Former BBC buddies Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James Mear are currently filming a new car show for Amazon Prime; Amazon Prime is a membership program which gives customers access to streaming video, music, e-books, free shipping and a variety of other Amazon-specific services and deals. Prime includes original Amazon programming such as Transparent and The Man In The High Castle.
We continue our push to make #PrimeAir a reality. Jeremy Clarkson shares a look https://t.co/2IoZvR08lH https://t.co/gEiSXzMqmv
— Amazon (@amazon) November 29, 2015
The promo is as much a political move as an attempt to build hype. Currently the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) restricts the use of commercial drone operations; some of these restricts include the requirement that drones stay within the operator’s line of sight at all times and drones can’t be flown over densely populated areas.
When the FAA rules were initially proposed in February this year, Paul Misener, Amazon’s vice president for global public policy said in a statement: “The FAA needs to begin and expeditiously complete the formal process to address the needs of our business, and ultimately our customers. We are committed to realizing our vision for Prime Air and are prepared to deploy where we have the regulatory support we need.”
Using Clarkson is just another push for public support for drones.
