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Google Wing’s drone delivery service has today launched in Melbourne in its most significant international expansion yet.
Around 250,000 residents in the city’s eastern suburbs will be able to order smaller goods from the Eastland Shopping Centre via the DoorDash app.
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It comes with Wing’s Jesse Suskin set to speak at Australian Aviation’s upcoming Summit on 29 August. To find out more and book tickets, click here.
Wing launched commercially in 2019 in Australia and allows for the delivery of packages weighing less than 1.5kg, such as coffees and sandwiches.
It’s already making hundreds of thousands of deliveries each year from shopping mall rooftops and supermarket car parks in its original Queensland bases of Ipswich, Logan and the Gold Coast.
The new service will initially allow those living in 26 Victorian suburbs, listed at the bottom of this article, to order from 20 shops based in the huge Ringwood mall.
“Eastland is one of the largest shopping centres in the country,” Suskin said.
“It’s big centre, and it’s a really big population area we’ll be able to cover, we should be able to serve about 250,000 people from this one location.
“Melbourne is obviously a foodie town, and we’re delivering freshly prepared food and hot coffee, so I think it will be a big hit.”
The news means Melbourne, with a population of over 5 million, is now the biggest city Wing serves globally.
Wing started life in 2012 as one of the first projects at the tech giant’s super-secretive research lab, Google X, alongside its augmented reality eyeglasses and self-driving cars.
It launched its first trials in 2018 before starting more commercial flights the following year in both Canberra and Logan.
Once a customer submits an order via the app, the drone flies to pick up the package at the designated delivery centre before climbing to a cruise height of 45m and flying to the destination.
Once there, it hovers and lowers the package to the ground, automatically unclipping the parcel without assistance from the customer.
At first, eligible businesses had to be based in one of the firm’s distribution centres, but Wing has now switched to basing itself on the roofs of shopping malls and larger supermarkets.
Suskin told Australian Aviation that adding additional bases has the potential to create a “network effect” in the future, which could allow drones to fly to standalone businesses.
“I think there will be a model in which we operate where perhaps a drone takes off one from one centre, does a delivery and goes to another to charge or pick up a different package.
“Or to where a drone takes off from the centre and goes to an adjacent shop a kilometre down the road to do a remote pick up and then carry on.”
New Victorian suburbs with access to drone delivery
- Ringwood
- Ringwood North
- Mitcham
- Nunawading
- Donvale
- Park Orchards
- Warranwood
- Croydon Hills
- Croydon South
- Bayswater
- Wantirna
- Heathmont
- Vermont
- Vermont South
- Forest Hill
- Wonga Park
- Kilsyth
- Warrandyte South
- Blackburn
- Blackburn North
- Doncaster East
- Croydon North
- Croydon
- Bayswater North
- Boronia
- Wantirna South
