I mean, if I was working there, I would be planning my escape now from these crazy career destroying idea hogs. And if I was doing a PhD in battery chemistry, I sure as hell wouldn't let these guys near any of my research.
Any real company wouldn't do this sort of thing as litigating former employees (rather than just paying them the money you will spend on lawyers to entice them back) is a sure fire way to destroy your talent pool.
To be fair, they stuffed up the battery venture, and are probably just run by some MBAs now who are slowly turning it into a patent trolling outfit.
While I agree with people saying the whole drone thing was just a Bezos PR stunt, out of interest, wouldn't it be better to use a single rotor helicopter rather than an octocopter for these sorts of tasks? I remember reading how a lot of the energy in a multi-rotor is wasted accelerating and braking the motors to control pitch and attitude, and this leads to substantial conversion losses and the need to oversize everything. Surely at eight rotors, the cost of adding a swash plate control would be worth it for the efficiency gains, especially in a commercial setting.
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I mean, if I was working there, I would be planning my escape now from these crazy career destroying idea hogs. And if I was doing a PhD in battery chemistry, I sure as hell wouldn't let these guys near any of my research. Any real company wouldn't do this sort of thing as litigating former employees (rather than just paying them the money you will spend on lawyers to entice them back) is a sure fire way to destroy your talent pool. To be fair, they stuffed up the battery venture, and are probably just run by some MBAs now who are slowly turning it into a patent trolling outfit.
While I agree with people saying the whole drone thing was just a Bezos PR stunt, out of interest, wouldn't it be better to use a single rotor helicopter rather than an octocopter for these sorts of tasks? I remember reading how a lot of the energy in a multi-rotor is wasted accelerating and braking the motors to control pitch and attitude, and this leads to substantial conversion losses and the need to oversize everything. Surely at eight rotors, the cost of adding a swash plate control would be worth it for the efficiency gains, especially in a commercial setting.
Relative to the few who will own everything and actually be able to buy stuff. Isn't that the plan?