With UberEATS, Uber has gone from a mere ride hailing service to a service that also delivers food to customers, taking advantage of its infrastructure and also its drivers. However it seems that the company could be thinking of expanding on those services by potentially using drones to deliver food.This is according to a report from The Wall Street Journal (via Engadget) in which it appears that a job listing by Uber has seemingly confirmed the company’s plans which could launch as early as 2021. The job is calling for a person who has “flight standards and training” experience, and will be able to “help make delivery drones functional as soon as next year and commercially operational in multiple markets by 2021.”
Note that Uber has expressed interest in the idea in the past. Earlier this year at Uber’s Elevate Summit, the company’s CEO did discuss the possibility of a drone-based food delivery service, and now this job listing seems to confirm it. However whether or not they’ll be able to launch in 2021 remains to be seen as we imagine that there’ll probably be some regulatory hurdles to overcome.
The idea of using drones to make deliveries isn’t new either. We have seen how some companies have tested the idea, such as Domino’s in New Zealand where they tested pizza deliveries using drones. It actually makes sense as drones can avoid certain issues of regular deliveries, like traffic, which could cut down on delivery times and potentially allow companies to make more deliveries.