The drones, or Prime Air to give the project its official name, are being worked on in a number of research centres including one in Cambridge (in the UK, not Massachusetts).
“One day Prime Air deliveries will be as common as seeing a mail truck,” says Bezos. “The technical problems are very straight ahead. The biggest issue, or the biggest thing that needs to be worked on, is the regulatory side.”
Although tight-lipped about which country the service will launch in first, Bezos hints strongly that the UK is near the front of the pack. “What I would say is that in the scheme of things the UK regulatory agencies have been very advanced. The FAA [the US aviation regulator] is catching up a little here in the US, but the UK has been, I’d say, a very encouraging example of good regulation. I think we like what we see there.”
