[stevewepay]

I don't think energy is the driving factor.

There are a lot more technical challenges associated with self-driving cars than self-driving drones. Self-driving cars aren't even fully solved at this point. However, even very cheap hobby drones can accurately fly to specific GPS coordinates. Even most plane flights are auto-piloted and even auto-land, so I believe that drones are a lot closer in terms of implementation than self-driving cars.

If there is a business case that determines that drones, while being potentially more energy-intensive, can save a company money due to speed, I believe it will win. For example, imagine Amazon could redistribute inventory between two warehouses with a click of a button and overnight, that sounds like a definite competitive advantage to me.

[maxerickson]

I would expect trucks with drivers to continue to beat drones on cost for a long time, a single trailer load is at least hundreds of drone trips, maybe thousands.

[stevewepay]

The comparison was between self-driving trucks vs drones, not human-driven trucks vs drones. Obviously those are going to be cheaper than whatever current technology we have.

And there's nothing preventing drones on the rough order of magnitude of trailers from flying around, as long as it's done in a safe and regulated way.