Vox | By: Zeeshan Aleem May 26, 2017, 8:50am EDT:

BEIJING — In 2013, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos used a 60 Minutes segment to demonstrate his company’s newest innovation: a drone that he said would be capable of delivering packages to a customer’s doorsteps within 30 minutes of an order. Four years later, the so-called “Amazon Prime Air” has yet to get off the ground.

Bezos has been stymied by federal regulations on commercial drone use, and approval will likely take at least a few more years.

That’s not the case here in China, where an Amazon clone called JD.com already has a fleet of dozens of drones that have carried out thousands of deliveries in the outskirts of Beijing and four other provinces.

The drones started flying last year, and the company is already planning to massively expand the size of the fleet and number of delivery routes.

In the northwestern province of Shaanxi, JD.com has just gotten sign-off from the government to roll out heavy-load drones that can carry a payload weighing more than a ton.

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Image Credit – Fair Use – JD.com