Yet another company is entering the race to make deliveries via drones a logistical reality.  Elroy Air has seemingly found a way around the safety issues that are present with drone delivery systems.  Their plan, stop thinking small and expand.  Rather than having mid sized drones deliver parcels to homes, they have designed a drone large enough to transport heavy cargo loads.

Elroy Air was founded in 2016 by David Merrill and Clint Cope.  Their San Fransisco, CA office employees a team of around 50 people with backgrounds in industrial design, aerospace engineering, supply chain expertise, computer scientists, and entrepreneurs.  According to their official website “Our mission is to improve quality of life worldwide with advanced air cargo systems- safely, efficiently, and autonomously.”  They realized that to make a drone that can deliver goods from point A to B, working on a small scale wasn’t good enough.  There are too many logistical safety issues still in the way for home drone deliveries.  But the logistical issues are less when delivering from one distribution center to another that does not involve flying over residential or urban areas.

The Elroy Air Cargo drone is a tandem winged drone that can travel up to 300 miles carrying a cargo of up to 500lbs.  It has 6 propellers for vertical lift and a push propeller for forward flight.  It needs no airport for landing or an electric charging station as it has a hybrid-electric power-train.  It carries pods on it’s underside for quick and autonomous delivery and reloading.  It uses GPS and Lidar systems for navigation while one pilot is remotely overseeing it’s course.

So how will the Elroy Air Cargo drone be applicable?  It has obvious benefits for military applications.  It can easily and quickly make military equipment deliveries in remote locations while providing a human risk free scenario in hostile environments.  They also aim to help in humanitarian ventures such as supplying life saving supplies in disaster areas.  However, their main goal is to serve as a commercial goods transporter.

As CEO David Merrill said, “We want to be like the Ford F-150 of the sky.”  He envisions Elroy Air Cargo as a way of replacing the millions of delivery trucks crisscrossing the US.  It is estimated that there are 3.5 million truck drivers in the US.  These trucks block roadways and leave a damning carbon footprint.  A drone with cargo capabilities can drastically cut truck traffic and emissions.  These drones can also make deliveries to more remote locations.  These factors all together can save shipping companies a fortune.

Elroy Air has begun testing this out already.  They just raised $9.2 million in a seed round and are hoping to have their cargo drone ready for full scale testing by the end of the summer.

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