Ziplines Drones Complete Their 1 Millionth Delivery, Flying Over 70 Million Miles

San Francisco-based drone-delivery service Zipline “said Friday that it hit its 1 millionth delivery to customers,” reports CNBC, “and that it’s eyeing restaurant partnerships in its next phase of growth.”

Zipline’s clients already include more than 4,700 hospitals, according to the article, as well as major brands like Walmart. A Panera executive even told CNBC they hope to test Zipline deliveries in Seattle next year, expecting they won’t cost the company any more than third-party delivery services:

The company said its zero-emission drones have now flown more than 70 million autonomous commercial miles across four continents and delivered more than 10 million products. The milestone 1 millionth delivery carried two bags of IV fluid from a Zipline distribution center in Ghana to a local health facility… Zipline CEO Keller Rinaudo Cliffton told CNBC that 70% of the company’s deliveries have happened in the past two years and, in the future, the goal is to do 1 million deliveries a day…
“We need to start using vehicles that are light, fast, autonomous and zero-emission,” Cliffton said. “Delivering in this way is 10 times as fast, it’s less expensive … and relative to the traditional delivery apps that most restaurants will be working with, we triple the service radius, which means you actually [get] 10 times the number of customers who are reachable via instant delivery.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.