Beijing-based Chinese e-commerce company JD.com plans to revolutionize aerial drone delivery by building one of their own. Ranked only second on Alibaba.com, the company on Monday said it's developing a new drone system that is capable of handling deliveries weighing over one tons or more. Reports indicate that such a high-capacity delivery system will greatly benefit shoppers in rural areas.
Going to the details, the Wall Street Journal reports that the Chinese province of Shaanxi will soon receive the new drone delivery system developed by JD.com. The second largest e-commerce portal will now specialize in delivering packages with the help of drones mainly serving areas without a major on-road service. The website is currently operating a fleet of 30 drones mainly to prime locations like Beijing and Sichuan.
With the help of their new drones, JD.com plans to expand their service to a region that's home to more than 230million people as the website mentions. The larger capacity aerial devices will also transport goods in other directions primarily to farmers who mainly rely on urban markets in order to satisfy their needs. Unmanned aerial devices have been long tested for various needs like aerial mapping, traffic imagery and even cellular communications.
As reported by the New York Times, JD.com primarily wants to facilitate farmers to carry their farm produce to urban locations. The e-commerce service has already seen success by making user of smaller drones for their first deliveries back in November last year. The website currently makes use of 65,000 employees in order to sever about 235 million customers.
As mentioned by the company's CEO Wang Zhenhui, JD.com "envisions a network to efficiently transport goods between cities and provinces in the future". JD.com plans to set up a research and development campus that will also manufacture drones. Another prime example of a major e-commerce giant is Amazon who also happens to be experimenting with aerial delivery for customer packages.
