The DJI FlyCart 30 launched in China last summer. And finally, the DJI delivery drone is available to customers potentially worldwide.

The Chinese-based drone maker announced on Jan. 10 that the drone would now go on sale to the global market. But with the announcement came just as many questions as answers. It’s unclear how much the DJI delivery drone will cost. It’s also unclear which exact countries it’ll be available in.

Products are subject to all sorts of regulatory approvals by country, and of course drones are no exception. It’ll be intriguing to see which countries allow DJI’s massive deliver drone to fly — and it’s definitely not a guarantee that the U.S. will be one of them.

As far as cost, we do have a clue. When the drone went on sale last August in China, it was sold in a package for about $17,000. That included the drone itself, as well as the RC Plus remote controller, two Intelligent Flight Batteries, and a charging hub and cables.

But DJI is certainly hoping customers worldwide jump on it.

“We are optimistic that FlyCart 30 will become a trusted solution for aerial delivery, solving complex terrain and terminal transportation problems efficiently, economically, and most importantly, safely from the air,” said  Christina Zhang, Senior Director of Corporate Strategy at DJI.

What to know about the DJI delivery drone

We broke down the DJI FlyCart 30 delivery drone when it debuted in August 2023, but we’ll save you a click and share some key details about the DJI delivery drone on this same page.

• Payload capacity: The DI delivery drone can carry cargo weighing up to 30kg (66lbs).
• Max travel distance: This can fly up to 16km (10 miles). 
• Weather resistance: FC30 is designed for all weather and terrains. It has IP55 protection, can operate in temperatures ranging from -4° to 122° F. It can fly in winds up to 12 m/s.
• Safety features: There are a few here. Some highlights include:
  • Dual active phased array radar and binocular vision systems, which enable all-weather multidirectional intelligent obstacle sensing, day or night.
  • A built-in ADS-B signal receiver, to warn of nearby crewed aircraft.
  • A built-in parachute

Other key features of this DJI delivery drone include:

• Coaxial four-axis, eight-blade, multi-rotor configuration
• Carbon fiber propellers
• 20 m/s maximum flight speed
• DJI O3 transmission
• Dual Operator mod

DJI DeliveryHub and other flight management software

Along with the drone, DJI also offers corresponding software called DJI DeliveryHub. Considered a one-stop air delivery management platform, it’s designed to make the lives easier for folks conducting the actual deliveries through more efficient operation planning, operation status monitoring, centralized team resource management, and data collection and analysis.

The actual drone piloting is done through DJI Pilot 2, should you opt for manual flight. That software displays all sorts of information including real-time flight status and cargo status. In instances of extreme weather or other abnormalities, DJI Pilot 2 serves as your first alert system (and can help find you a safer place to land).

What are the other delivery drones?

The biggest players in drone delivery like Wing and Zipline use their own, in-house custom delivery drones. With Zipline, thats called the Platform 2 system, which is a drone plus a secondary Zipline droid in a loader. Google-sister company Wing builds a custom drone designed to work with its Autoloader, which makes it easy to latch packages to the company’s eVTOL style drones. Neither of those two company’s drones are for sale to the general public.

That said, there are options for off-the-shelf drones from other companies beyond DJI. One of the biggest names in A2Z Drone Delivery, an American drone company that recently expanded with new headquarters near Los Angeles, California. Their products include a long-range RDSX Pelican hybrid VTOL delivery drone, as well as the recently-released medium range RDST Longtail integrated delivery drone. 

Delivery drones are still very much a hot topic. Walmart used a huge chunk of the airtime during its CES 2024 keynote to gush about its drone delivery efforts — which are being done in partnership with both Zipline and Wing. Walmart can reach roughly 60,000 homes in the Dallas – Fort Worth area by drone delivery at present. But just this week, it shared ambitious plans to expand service to millions of customers in 2024 — all summing up to a goal to serve 75% of the region’s population.

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How’s this for an indicator that drone delivery is huge? The National Health Service, which is the largest employer in Europe, has turned to Zipline drones to help ship critical medical supplies in North East England.

Zipline announced in December 2023 that it would be starting up operations in the United Kingdom via a partnership with the NHS, which is one of the largest public health systems in the world and Europe’s largest employer. Come sometime in fall 2024, it’ll begin conducting deliveries in Northumberland (that’s a county in North East England, bordering Scotland) with its Platform 1 system, which it had launched back in 2023.

With the Zipline-provided drone delivery system, NHS says it expects to see reduced medical care costs and canceled procedures by being able to provide on-demand access to medical equipment.

The news is fairly interesting given that the NHS is the largest employer in Europe, with one in every 25 adults in England working for the NHS. What’s more, the service is set to create even more local jobs across robotics and aviation.

As part of the project, Zipline is partnering with another UK-based healthcare logistics company called Apian. Apian was co-founded by a team of former NHS doctors and has built a healthcare-focused aviation platform that provides a fully automated, on-demand delivery system.

How will the Zipline drone deliveries for NHS work?

As for how it’ll specifically work, Zipline will build a hub for its operations near the Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital in Cramlington, Northumberland. That’ll allow Zipline to centralize the inventory of frequently-ordered products such as prescription medicines, wound care products and joint replacement implants. The NHS will then place orders through Apian’s system, and Zipline will fulfill them.

From there, they’ll be in better proximity to health facilities, which for now are set to be:

• Hexham General Hospital
• Wansbeck General Hospital
• Haltwhistle War Memorial Hospital
• Various regional health facilities

Zipline’s drones (which it calls Zips) can travel up to 130 miles roundtrip in almost any weather condition. Once the drones approach the delivery location, they release packages with parachutes that float down to a hospital’s outdoor area. Zipline also sys its drones have redundant safety systems and are supervised by trained aviation personnel who can track a Zip’s flight and intervene if necessary. 

Unlike many other drone delivery companies such as Flirtey and Flytrex that primarily focus on delivering food products, Zipline’s roots are in medical drone deliveries. The company started in largely developing countries delivering critically-needed medical supplies like blood. After mastering efforts in developing countries, primarily in Africa, Zipline brought its operations to the U.S., where it’s used by companies like Cleveland Clinic, Pfizer, and Walmart.

In fact, Zipline claims it has flown more than 60 million commercial miles to date and delivered millions of medical products worldwide, including more than 13 million vaccine doses. Zipline was considered the largest drone delivery company of 2023.

Zipline is no stranger to medical drone deliveries, though neither are Apian nor the NHS. Back in 2023, Wing (the drone delivery company affiliated with Google) announced it would provide service in South Dublin in tandem with Apian to deliver pharmacy items, laboratory samples, and medical devices and supplies.

But that was contained to Ireland, and this latest set of news applies to a new region. And that’s set to solidify the United Kingdom as a drone powerhouse, a title it’s already been able to claim even before this news came out. For example, the UK was the site of the world’s first permanent postal drone delivery service, a European drone superhighway and it’s seen major developments in the ways drones can be detected.

What is Apian?

For its part, Apian already has a wealth of experience with drones. In October 2021, Apian’s own drones conducted the world’s first chemotherapy drone flight. The next summer, Apian drones completed the UK’s first prescription medicine delivery. And by the next spring, Apian conducted the UK’s first beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) blood pack delivery.

With these new operations announced last month, Zipline, Apian and the NHS say they will be able to serve nearly three dozen health facilities across the region, reducing the health system’s reliance on expensive last-minute logistics to move products between facilities when needed. 

“I’ve seen first hand the impact that running out of supplies can have on patient health outcomes,” said Dr. Christopher Law, Medical Director and Co-Founder of Apian. “Healthcare should benefit from on-demand delivery, much like consumers now do in their personal lives. Delivering critical products with drones, where and when they’re most needed, will improve supply chain efficiency and give doctors, nurses and clinicians more time to focus on the most important thing — their patients.”

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It’s expansion time for A2Z Drone Delivery, an American drone company that started as a project at Brown University. When it went from school project to actual company, it first operated out of Mar Vista, a wealthy neighborhood on the west side of Los Angeles. But the company is growing, and to gain more space it opened a new headquarters this winter not far away — in Torrance, California.

Torrance is a compelling choice, as it has a strong aerospace economy. Robinson Helicopters are designed and built in Torrance, as are the headquarters of aerospace fastener maker Alcoa Fastening Systems (now known as Arconic). It’s also less than 10 miles from the city of El Segundo, California, which is home to the headquarters of Lockheed Martin. Outside of aerospace, Torrance is also home to the U.S. headquarters of Japanese automaker American Honda Motor Company and its luxury vehicle division, Acura.

“Planting our headquarters in the aerospace capital of the world ensures we have ready access to the highest quality aerospace talent and suppliers, and are able to continue the supportive relationships we have enjoyed with local government entities,” said Aaron Zhang, CEO and Co-Founder of A2Z Drone Delivery. “From Torrance, we are able to provide in-person support for our customers, and have ready access to nearby flight test areas for flight trials and customer training.”

And the Torrance expansion isn’t all for the company, which builds drones designed to execute deliveries. A2Z Drone Delivery also recently expanded its test facility in Anji County, which is located just outside Shanghai, China.

The Torrance headquarters will primarily serve as the company’s base for research and development, product and software design, global sales and marketing, as well as customer training and support. The Shanghai test facility is where company engineers will conduct advanced autonomous BVLOS trials under real-life conditions (including actual deliveries for resident in what’s a rural area).

The drones are manufactured overseas, but the company would not comment specifically as to where.

What to know about A2Z Drone Delivery

A2Z’s initially product was simply a winch, which it launched in 2019 as a mechanism that mounted on drones made by other companies. These days, though, the company is more focused on its own fleet of ready-to-fly, off-the-shelf commercial logistics drones.

That lineup includes the company’s long-range RDSX Pelican hybrid VTOL delivery drone, as well as the recently-released medium range RDST Longtail integrated delivery drone. Those two products — as well as the initial winch — allow teams using drones for deliveries to keep their drones at a high altitude across the entire delivery process (and thus away from people), which is generally considered a safety feature (largely because recipients stay away from spinning UAV propellers).

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German football SV Darmstadt 98 (that’s a soccer team for the American readers out there) might have found itself a bunch of new fans — and those new fans could very well come from the drone community.

SV Darmstadt 98 is rolling out a delightful way to have its fan merchandise delivered this winter. You guessed it — it’s via drone. Assuming you live in certain districts of the town of Michelstadt, which is in Germany’s Odenwald region, you can have fan merchandise specific to local Bundesliga club SV Darmstadt 98 delivered to you via drone. That includes jerseys, scarves, and Christmas accessories. Yes, that even includes a €65 Ugly Christmas Sweater with SV 98 branding.

The drone-delivered products are available for sale through a specific website called Liefer Michel (‘Liefer’ means deliver in German). Liefer Michel is the German version of a delivery service called LastMile, which was founded in Vilnius, Lithuania and focused on all sorts of last-mile delivery mechanisms (which, yes, encompasses drone delivery).

Through the Liefer Michel website, you can order a variety of items for delivery not just from the Darmstadt 98 soccer league, but also through other vendors such as grocery items from the Rewe supermarket and regional products from the Odenwaldbox range. Across all its cities served, the LastMile service delivers goods from more than 40 different stores (though not necessarily via drone).

In fact, the drone deliveries specifically are executed by yet another drone delivery company — that’s German drone delivery company Wingcopter. Wingcopter is in the midst of a pilot project which incorporates orders made through LieferMichel and is also done with support from the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences. It’s got government backing too, as it’s funded by the German Federal Ministry of Digital and Transport (BMDV) as part of the “Innovative Air Mobility” funding directive.

If the name Wingcopter sounds familiar, that’s because it’s been a fairly strong player in the drone delivery space. Among its differentiators is its patented tilt-rotor mechanism, allowing it to take off and land vertically like a multicopter, while flying long distances as efficiently and quickly as a fixed-wing aircraft, even in rain and wind. Earlier this spring, Wingcopter received €40 million in what’s called a ‘quasi-equity investment’ from European Investment Bank (EIB). Among the company’s other accolades are being named a 2020 Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum, and coming in as a finalist in the third annual AUVSI XCELLENCE Awards 2020.

Just this month, Wingcopter won the Gründerszene Award 2023, which is a highly prestigious award for German startups.

According to Wingcopter, this recent bout of news technically means SV Darmstadt 98 is the first soccer club in the world to use drones to deliver merchandise to fans. Hey, it’s a pretty niche sort of ‘first’ to claim, but it’s something.

Though for now, the deliveries are still semi-limited. Don’t expect the drone to actually come to your doorstep. If you order an eligible Darmstadt 98 product and live in an eligible district of the town of Michelstadt, your goods will then by flown via Wingcopter delivery drones to fixed landing points just outside of the villages. From there, they’re actually transported the last few meters to the customer’s front door by electric cargo bike — not actually a drone.

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