从卢旺达到全球物流：Zipline 的旅程

我记得在卢旺达早期，我出去会见我们服务的医生和实验室技术人员，问他们，你知道，最近怎么样？你们怎么看？有什么反馈？我那时是个初出茅庐的学习型工程师，以为他们会说些关于无人机或类似的事情。但我收到的主要反馈是：人们 24/7 都会生病。为什么你们只开放 12 小时？

I remember being in Rwanda early days and going out and meeting with some of the doctors and lab techs that we were serving and asking them, you know, how's it going? What do you think? What's your feedback? Here I am, you know, up and coming learning engineer, thinking they're going to say something about the drone or some of these things. And the main piece of feedback that I received was people get sick 24/7. Why are you guys only open 12 hours a day?

嗯。

Mhm.

对吧？

Right?

尤其是当你们运送救命血液的时候。

Especially when you're delivering life-saving blood.

是的，没错。这对我来说是一个关键的洞察，就像，天哪，我们找到了产品市场契合点，在一个我们的产品还不够好，但正在解决真实需求的市场。所以拥有这样一个滩头市场，解决真实问题，当你的客户告诉你他们主要的反馈是想要更多你的服务时，这就像是个好兆头。

Yeah, exactly. And so that was a really key insight for me where it's like, man, we have found product market fit in a market where, yeah, our product wasn't great yet, but it was solving a real need. And so having that beachhead market where there's a real problem being solved, and when your customer is telling you that their main feedback is they want more of your service, it's like that's a good sign.

欢迎 Keller 和 Eric 来到节目。你们在 Zipline 工作了很长时间。Keller 是联合创始人，Eric 你负责系统工程和安全。关于无人机、无人机系统，以及你们在 LLM 出现之前就进入硬件领域，我们有很多话题要聊。所以我们有很多问题。

Welcome Keller and Eric to the show. You guys have been working at Zipline for a long period of time. Keller is the co-founder and Eric, you are in charge of systems engineering and safety. And we got lots of things to talk about in this whole world of drones, drone systems, and how you guys started in this hardware space before LLMs even started. So we have lots of questions.

太棒了。

Awesome.

但你不喜欢 Zipline 被描述为无人机公司，尽管你们现在可能是世界上最大的自主无人机公司。

But you don't like Zipline being described as a drone company even though you're probably the largest autonomous drone company in the world right now.

我的意思是，你知道，我们一直想成为一家极度以客户为中心的公司，而现实是，我们的客户根本不在乎无人机。你知道，我们的目标一直是构建一个地球上的自动化物流系统，近似于瞬间传送。如今所有依赖 Zipline 的客户，他们真的不在乎幕后运行的技术。他们在乎的是下载一个应用，打开它，看到大量他们想购物的不同品牌和很棒的餐厅，然后点击一个按钮，5 分钟后就能送到。所以我们一直努力专注于体验，而不是具体的技术。

I mean, you know, we've always wanted to be an extremely customer obsessed company, and the reality is none of our customers care at all about drones. You know, our goal was always to build an automated logistics system for Earth and to approximate teleportation. And all the customers who are living on Zipline today, they really don't care about the technology operating behind the curtain. What they care about is their ability to download an app, open it up, see a huge number of different brands and amazing restaurants that they want to shop with, and then click a button and have it delivered to them 5 minutes later. So we've always really tried to focus on the experience rather than on the specific technology.

嗯，这个节目是关于技术的。

Well, this show is about technology.

我们对此很兴奋。

We're excited about that.

这个播客是关于技术的。Zipline 背后的底层技术是什么？你们 2011 年成立，2014 年转型。这远早于任何与 AI 或机器人相关的事物。

This podcast is about technology. What is the underlying technology behind Zipline? You started in 2011. You pivoted in 2014. This is way before anything related to AI or robotics.

AI、机器人、基础模型，任何相关的东西。

AI, robotics, foundation models, anything related to that.

是的。

Yeah.

但你们在那之前就已经开始了，并且也乘上了后来所有事物的浪潮。

But you've kind of been before all of that, and you're riding the wave of all of the things that have come afterward as well.

是的，那时候创办机器人公司是最蠢的事情。就像，为什么？你知道，当时和投资者谈论这件事并不容易，而且特别难，因为很多这样的对话，我那时才 23、24 岁。Eric 大约在那时加入公司，我们开始描述这个地球自动化物流系统的愿景，速度提高 10 倍，成本减半，零排放。当我们试图为这个愿景筹集资金时，最大的问题之一是投资者会说：“这不是在美国违法吗？”事实上，我想这就是我们开始谈论这件事时你问我的问题。

Yeah, this was when starting a robotics company was the dumbest thing you could possibly do. Like, why? You know, talking to an investor at the time about it wasn't easy, and it was particularly hard because so many of those conversations, I mean I was 23, 24. Eric joined the company around that time, and we were starting to describe this vision of autonomous logistics system for Earth that would be 10 times as fast, half the cost, zero emission. One of the biggest problems when we're trying to raise money for that vision was investors would say, "Isn't this illegal in the US?" In fact, I think that's the question you asked me when we started talking about this.

我们不允许超视距飞行。

We weren't allowed to fly beyond visual line of sight.

实际上根本不允许飞行，但是的，所以答案是，是的，这是违法的。然后大多数投资者会说：“嗯，我们不投资违法的事情。所以我们不会投资。”但由于奇怪的原因，这基本上让 Zipline 走上了这样的道路：如果在美国违法，那我们可以在世界其他地方推出，那里的服务价值会极高。Zipline 决定在卢旺达推出，直接将输血送到医院和初级保健机构。这让我们有了一个非常强大的用例，以至于政府会与我们紧密合作来实现它。

Weren't allowed to fly at all, really, but yeah, and so the answer was yes, it's illegal. And then most investors would be like, "Well, we don't invest in illegal things. So we're not going to invest." But for weird reasons, this is what basically took Zipline down this path of like, well, if it's illegal in the US, then we can launch in other parts of the world where the value of the service would be extremely high. Zipline decided to launch in Rwanda in delivering blood transfusions directly to hospitals and primary care facilities. This enabled us to have a use case so powerful that a government would work very closely with us to make it happen.

让它合法。

Make it legal.

并使其合法，或者至少对现有的监管框架做出豁免。然后另一件事，关于如何将 Zipline 视为一家公司，当我们在 2016 年推出时，我们想，我们有这架非常酷的无人机。我们投入了所有精力设计这些非常酷的飞机，它们具有所有这些伟大的基本特性。当我们推出时，完全是一场灾难。因为现实是，我们在第一年学到的，前八个月，我们签了合同要服务 21 家医院。而前 9 个月我们只服务了一家医院。特别是 Eric，那些夜晚你睡了多少？

And to make it legal, or at least make an exemption to their existing regulatory framework. And then the other thing, when it comes to how to think about Zipline as a company, when we launched in 2016, we were like, we have this really cool drone. We put all this work into designing these really cool aircraft that have all these great fundamental features. And when we launched, it was a total disaster. Because the reality, what we learned in that first year, is for the first eight, we'd signed a contract to serve 21 hospitals. And we served one hospital for the first 9 months. And Eric in particular, how much did you sleep during those nights?

在卢旺达待了很多时间，睡得不多。

A lot of time in Rwanda and didn't sleep a lot.

当你在美国时，我们会在午夜被叫醒，因为那是配送中心启动的时候，然后一切都会坏掉。什么都不工作。完全绝望，持续通宵，周末也在工作，因为我们犯了一个大错误，认为酷炫的飞行器是解决方案的大部分。我们在第一年学到的是，无人机只占解决方案复杂性的 15%。

When you're in the US, we'd get woken up at like midnight because that's when the distribution center was turning on, and everything would be broken. Nothing was working. And it was totally desperate, constant all-nighters and working through the weekends because we'd made this big error, which was thinking that the cool vehicle was the majority of the solution. What we learned during that first year is that the drone is 15% of the complexity of the solution.

Zipline 有无人机，它的硬件。

Zipline had the drone, the hardware of it.

是的。只占 15%。要构建这么多辅助软件系统、维护系统，我们如何持有库存并进行库存管理，如何与国家民航当局整合，我们稍后会详细讨论，如何与国家医疗系统整合，如何做订单和需求管理。我们必须构建整个物流系统的所有这些其他部分。所以这就是为什么我认为很多人可能会看 Zipline 并想，哇，这是一家很酷的无人机公司。他们建造了很酷的飞机。现实是，飞机只占解决方案的 15%，而解决方案需要构建一些东西，让它感觉像神奇的、可靠的、24/7、365 天的瞬间传送，服务于现在依赖这项服务的数亿人。

Yeah. Is only 15%. To build so many auxiliary software systems, maintenance systems, how do we hold the inventory and do inventory management, how do we integrate with a national civil aviation authority which we'll talk more about, how do we integrate with a national healthcare system, how do we do ordering and demand management. We had to build out all of these other parts of the overall logistics system. So this is the reason I think a lot of people might look at Zipline and be like, wow, it's a cool drone company. They build a cool aircraft. The reality is the aircraft is like 15% of the solution that's required to build something that just feels like magical, reliable, teleportation 24/7, 365 to the now, you know, hundreds of millions of people who depend on the service.

说到 24/7，我记得在卢旺达早期，我出去会见我们服务的医生和实验室技术人员，问他们，你知道，最近怎么样？你们怎么看？有什么反馈？只是真正以客户为中心，想要优化产品。

Speaking of 24/7, I remember being in Rwanda early days and going out and meeting with some of the doctors and lab techs that we were serving and asking them, you know, how's it going? What do you think? What's your feedback? Just really being customer obsessed and wanting to optimize the product.

而且，你知道，我当时是个初出茅庐的学习工程师，以为他们会说些关于无人机之类的事情。而我收到的主要反馈是：人们 24/7 都会生病。为什么你们每天只营业 12 小时？

And, you know, here I am, an up-and-coming learning engineer, thinking they're going to say something about the drone or some of these things. And the main piece of feedback that I received was people get sick 24/7. Why are you guys only open 12 hours a day?

嗯。

Mhm.

对吧？所以

Right? And so

尤其是当你们运送救命血液的时候。

Especially when you're delivering life-saving blood.

是的，没错。所以那就是我们的起点，对吧？所以我们开始每天营业 12 小时，并努力从那里扩展和成长。那对我来说是一个关键的洞察，就像，天哪，我们找到了产品市场契合点，在一个我们的产品还不够好，但确实解决了真实需求的市场里。所以拥有这样一个滩头市场，解决真实问题，而且客户告诉你他们的主要反馈是想要更多你的服务，那是个好兆头。

Yeah, exactly. And so that was our, you know, you got to start somewhere, right? So we started being open 12 hours a day and trying to expand and grow from there. And so that was a really key insight for me where it's like, man, we found product-market fit in a market where yeah, our product wasn't great yet, but it was solving a real need. And so having that beachhead market where there's a real problem being solved and when your customer is telling you that their main feedback is they want more of your service, it's like that's a good sign.

是的，我们在第一年内就实现了 24/7 运营。

Yeah, we were 24/7 within the first year.

24/7。

24/7.

24/7 全年无休。我的意思是，在圣诞节那天，我通常会给我们所有的不同配送中心打电话，感谢他们并和他们联系。所以就像没有一天这些设施不依赖我们，你知道，我们从服务 1 家医院扩展到 20 家，再到 500 家，现在到全球 8 个国家的 5,000 家医院和健康设施，都由这个系统服务。它已经成为地球上最大的商业自主系统。

24/7 365. I mean, on Christmas day I usually call all of our different distribution centers to like thank them and check in with them. So like there is no day when these facilities don't depend on, you know, we went from serving one to 20 to 500 now to 5,000 hospitals and health facilities across the world across eight countries that are served by the system. It's become the largest commercial autonomous system on Earth.

你能为我们描述一下地球上最大的系统有多大吗？

Can you size for us the largest system on Earth?

我们刚刚突破了 1.4 亿商业自主里程，我的意思是，那是多少次？我想那就像到太阳再回来，或者

We just crossed 140 million commercial autonomous miles, which I mean, how many times is that I think that that's like to the sun and back or

我喜欢的一点是，美国每一条路，美国有很多路，在每一条路上行驶超过 30 次。

One of the things that I like is every road in the United States, there's a lot of roads in the United States, driving on every single road more than 30 times.

哇。

Wow.

这是个好数据。

It's a good stat.

很多。那很多，只是为了让你有个概念。

It's a lot. That's a lot just to put in perspective.

你知道，看到这个系统现在在所有这些八个国家产生的影响，我的意思是，宾夕法尼亚大学刚刚发表了一项研究，显示由于 Zipline，孕产妇死亡率降低了 51%。所以，分娩时失去生命的妈妈减少了一半。嗯，你知道，在 Zipline 服务的所有不同用例中，我们的一些合作伙伴估计我们每年拯救 10,000 到 12,000 条生命。而且随着我们现在的扩展，这种影响正在呈指数级增长，尤其是由于我们与美国国务院的新伙伴关系。

You know, seeing the impact that that system is now having across all these eight countries, I mean, University of Pennsylvania just published a study showing a 51% reduction in maternal mortality thanks to Zipline. So, half as many moms losing their lives in childbirth. Um we have you know, across all the different use cases that Zipline serves, some of our partners estimate that we're saving between 10 and 12,000 lives a year. And that impact is growing exponentially as we're now expanding, especially as a result of this new partnership we have with the US State Department.

与美国国务院的伙伴关系是什么？

What is that partnership with the State Department?

12 月，我们宣布与美国国务院达成一项 5.5 亿美元的伙伴关系，以扩大 Zipline 救命服务在我们已经运营的许多国家的影响。所以，随着 USAID 被关闭，美国真的在寻求新的方式参与这些国家并帮助拯救生命，但他们希望以加速这些国家经济并帮助美国经济的方式来做。所以，他们称之为商业外交的新战略。这个想法是，我们希望整个发展中世界都建立在美国 AI 和机器人技术之上。我们应该去，你知道，经济上帮助。我们应该带来美国最好的东西。有趣的是，当你和这些国家谈论他们想要什么时，他们会告诉你，他们厌倦了非政府组织免费提供的低质量援助，因为这些服务滋生依赖并阻止这些国家的经济增长。他们想要的是高薪工作、创业精神和技术。

December, we announced a $550 million partnership with the US State Department to expand the impact of Zipline's life-saving service across a lot of the countries where we're already operating. So, with USAID being shut down, the US was really seeking like new ways of engaging in these countries and helping save lives in these countries, but they wanted to do it in a way that would accelerate the economies of these countries and help the US economically. And so, the new strategy they're calling commercial diplomacy. The idea is that we want all of the developing world should be built on top of US AI and robotics technology. We should be going and, you know, economically helping. We should be bringing the best that the US has to offer. Interesting thing is when you talk to these countries about what they want, they'll tell you they are sick of, you know, low-quality aid provided by NGOs for free because these services engender dependence and prevent economic growth in the countries. What they want is high-paying jobs, entrepreneurship, technology.

嗯。

Mhm.

所以，美国正在经历一个巨大的战略转变，就像，好吧，我们有那个。我们有那些东西。所以让我们基本上走出去，激励这些国家采用那种基础设施，确保随着这些国家加速发展，他们使用美国机器人和 AI 技术。这对那些国家来说将是伟大的。它拯救生命。它为他们省钱，但这也意味着它将使美国有可能确保我们在未来几十年在制造业和机器人领域的领先地位。

And so, the US is going through a big strategic shift where it's like, well, we have that. We have those things. So let's basically go out and incentivize these countries to adopt that kind of infrastructure, make sure that, as these countries are accelerating, they're doing it using US robotics and AI technology. And this is something that will be great for those countries. It saves lives. It saves them money, but it also means that it will make it possible for the US to secure our lead in manufacturing and robotics of the decades to come.

我很好奇，你知道，你们现在运行着世界上最大的自主系统，而且你们在 10 年前就启动了它。所以，你们已经生产运营了 10 年。你们学到了很多普通坐在电脑屏幕前的工程师在尝试将 AI 部署到现实世界时根本不知道会遇到的东西。所以，我很好奇其中一些经验教训是什么。也许问这个问题的一个方式是，在过去 10 年里，有什么事情是你从未猜到在 2016 年刚开始启动这些系统时需要擅长的？

I'm curious about, you know, you guys because you now run the largest autonomous system in the world and you launched it 10 years ago at this point. So, you've been in production for 10 years. You've learned a lot of stuff that your average engineer sitting behind a computer screen has no idea they're going to run into when they try to deploy AI into the real world. And so, I'm curious what some of those lessons learned are. And maybe one way to ask the question is what popped up over the last 10 years that you never would have guessed you needed to be good at when you first started launching these systems in 2016.

是的。

Yeah.

你知道，我们一开始是运送救命产品，对吧？我们的客户在所有天气条件下都需要救命产品。你会认为是风之类的，但最奇怪的事情之一实际上是太阳天气。所以，太阳上会发生太阳耀斑。它们基本上是大爆炸，向地球发送辐射。它们会扰乱电离层，这基本上会导致来自 GPS 卫星的射频信号比预期更快或更慢。这可能导致导航系统的降级和挑战。所以，这里有一个例子，我们知道，当我们开始时，我们没想到这会是我们要解决的问题。但我们实际上已经在这个领域深入研究了，真的有两件事。一是设计我们的导航系统和 GNSS 系统，使其对这些条件具有鲁棒性，以确保我们仍然能在这些条件和具有挑战性的太阳耀斑时期以厘米级精度知道我们的飞机在哪里，以及设计系统使其具有超越 GNSS 的冗余，这样如果情况变得非常糟糕，我们仍然可以安全操作。

You know, we started off delivering life-saving products, right? And our customers need life-saving products all the time in all weather conditions. And you would think it's, you know, wind, these things, but one of the weirdest things is actually solar weather. So, there's solar flares that happen on the sun. So, they're basically big explosions that send radiation to the earth. They can mess with the ionosphere and that can cause basically the RF signals coming from GPS satellites to be faster or slower than you expect. And that can lead to degradation and challenges in navigation systems. And so, here's one example that, we know, when we were starting off, we didn't think that this was going to be something we have to figure out. But we actually have, you know, gone pretty deep in this space and really it's two things. One is designing our navigation system and our GNSS systems to be robust to these conditions to ensure that we can still know where our aircraft are with centimeter-level precision in those conditions and those challenging solar flare times, as well as designing the system to have redundancy beyond GNSS such that if things get really bad, we can still safely operate.

Eric，你负责安全。告诉我们你今天在安全方面学到了什么，特别是关于你们的计算故障切换系统。

Eric, you're in charge of safety. Tell us about what you've learned about safety today and and specifically about the compute failover system that you have.

是的。是的，当然。我的意思是，在过去十年的运营中，我们学到了很多东西，你知道，在现实世界中运行这个系统。嗯，我们引以为傲的一件事是我们如何发展到你说的计算故障切换。所以，有一个飞行计算机，驾驶飞机，很多传感器进入这台计算机，它基本上做很多数学运算并向执行器发送命令，对吧？所以，电机、控制服务，这些东西。

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's so many things that we've learned over the last decade of operating, you know, the system in the real world. Um one of the things that we're proud of is how we've developed to your point compute failover. So, there's a flight computer, flies the aircraft, lots of sensors come into this computer, and that basically does a lot of math and sends commands to actuators, right? So, motors, control services, these things.

所以，这就是控制飞机的大脑，对吧？

So, this is the brain that flies the aircraft, right?

嗯，你知道，我们学到的一件事是，你必须假设系统的任何部分都可能出现故障、卡顿或出错。这才是真正设计出稳健、可靠、安全系统的关键。那么，如果这台飞行计算机遇到问题怎么办？可能是软件问题，可能是连接器问题，也可能是其他各种问题。

Um, there, you know, one of the things that we've learned is you need to assume that any part of the system can have a fault, can have a hiccup, something can go wrong. And that's how you really design something to be robust, reliable, and safe. So, what do we do if this flight computer has a challenge? Could be a software challenge, it could be a connector challenge, could be these different things.

比如太阳辐射导致的比特翻转。

Bit flip due to solar radiation.

各种情况，对吧？所以，我们做了两套飞行计算机。这两套飞行计算机在任何时刻都认为自己正在控制飞机。它们都接收来自传感器的所有信息，都向执行器发送指令，然后有一个类似第三方的仲裁者，一个小型计算机，负责监控这两台计算机的健康状况，并告诉飞机上的其他每个节点该听谁的，谁真正在负责。

All kinds of things, right? And so, what we've done is we have two flight computers. And both of these flight computers think that they're flying the aircraft at any given point in time. They're all receiving all the information from the sensors, they're all sending in commands to the actuators, and there's like a kind of a third arbiter, a little computer, that is monitoring the health of those two and telling everyone every other node on the aircraft who to listen to, who's actually in charge.

如果仲裁者失效了怎么办？

What if the arbiter fails?

是的，如果仲裁者失效，那么原本在飞行的主计算机就会继续飞行。对吧？所以，一个在负责，如果监控自身的东西失效了，那我们就说：“好吧，我们就继续用那个好的继续飞，继续执行任务。”

Yeah, if the arbiter fails, then the primary computer that was flying just keeps flying. Right? So, one's in charge, and if the thing that's monitoring itself fails, then now we say, "Okay, like, you know, now we're just going to keep flying on the thing that was good, and we're going to keep flying the mission."

两个脑袋总比一个好。

Two heads are better than one.

是的，这是我们非常自豪的事情。嗯，实际上几周前我们就遇到过这样的事件，是的，在完成一次配送后，我们把包裹送到了客户手中，然后主飞行计算机出了点小问题，我们切换到了备用计算机，飞机自己飞回了家，着陆，一切完全正常。所以，你知道，把系统设计得彻彻底底稳健可靠，这就是你实现 250 万次配送、飞行 1.4 亿英里且无安全事故的方式。

Yeah, it's something we're really proud of. Um, we had actually had one of these events happen uh a couple weeks ago, yeah, where we had after a delivery, we delivered the package to the customer, and then we had a hiccup on the main flight computer, and we switched over to the backup, the aircraft flew itself home, landed, everything was totally fine. So, just, you know, designing the systems to be robust and reliable through and through is, you know, how you get the 2.5 million deliveries and 140 million miles flown with no safety incidents.

而且 Zipline 做的很多事情，并不是说：“哦，这完全是革命性的。没人想过要有备用飞行计算机。波音 777 就是这么做的。”但是波音 777 上飞行计算机的成本高达数百万美元。所以 Zipline 要做的很多事情是，借鉴航空航天安全最佳实践中的许多最佳想法，然后想办法利用智能手机供应链中的组件来构建。用几十美元或几百美元的成本，就能达到与传统航空航天相当的安全水平，但速度能快 100 倍，成本只有 1/100。

And a lot of what Zipline's doing, it's not like, "Oh, this is totally revolutionary. No one has ever thought about having a secondary flight computer. That's how Boeing 777 works. But the cost of a flight computer on a Boeing 777 is in the millions of dollars. And so a lot of what Zipline's having to do is take a lot of the best ideas that you can see in aerospace safety best practices for aerospace companies. And then you got to figure out how to build that using components coming out of the smartphone supply chain. Do it for you know tens of dollars or hundreds of dollars. You can achieve similar levels of safety to traditional aerospace, but you can move 100 times as fast at 1/100 of the cost.

是的。

Yeah.

你提到飞机只占 15%。请描述一下另外 85%，像分层一样，也许深入一些你们非常复杂的系统，比如我知道的，作为董事会成员，像探测与规避系统。

So you mentioned that the aircraft is only 15%. Describe the other 85% in like layers and maybe go down deep in some of your systems that are really really sophisticated like your like I know this because of what being a board member like the detect and avoid systems.

所以，你知道我们如何测试？为什么测试？嗯，我的想法是，首先我们不是一家软件公司，对吧？我们是一家真实世界的 AI 机器人公司。所以有真实世界中的机电系统。因此有硬件测试方面、软件测试方面和集成系统测试方面。我们有很多不同的测试环境和不同的测试方法。我举几个例子。在硬件方面，我们做了很多组件级测试，高加速寿命测试（HALT），我们把组件，比如电机之类的，让它们经历各种严酷考验，对吧？我们让它们经历各种挑战性条件，比如下雨、高温、高湿、腐蚀，同时我们还在让电机旋转、让部件运动等等，紫外线，你能想到的都有。

So you know how do we test why do we test? Really um the way I think about it is there maybe first of all we're not a software company, right? We're a real world AI robotics company. And so there's electromechanical systems out in the real world. So there's hardware test aspects, there's software test aspects, and there's the integrated system test aspects. We have a lot of different environments that we test a lot of different approaches. I'll name a few of them. You know on the hardware side we do a lot of component level testing halt testing highly accelerated lifetime testing where we're taking components maybe it's a motor these kinds of things and we're putting them through you know through hell, right? We're putting them through all kinds of challenging conditions making it rain making it hot making it humid making it corrosive all these things while we're exercising you know while we're spinning the motor while we're moving things all of the things, right? UV like you name it.

为了让你了解规模，飞机上有 700 个独特组件，全部由 Zipline 从零设计。我们不仅从零设计飞行计算机，还有配电板、电机控制器、电池、电池管理系统，你知道，那个吊舱是我们用来实际投递到客户家的小型机器人。吊舱上有一个完整的基于 Nvidia GPU 的飞行计算机。我们还在构建用于 Zip 飞进飞出的对接站的电子设备。所有这些，甚至电机，都是 Zipline 从零设计的，因为我们需要一种现成电机无法提供的推重比。所以你必须从零设计。所以，你知道，700 个独特组件，43 个主要子组件，所有这些都在你们俩都参观过的生产线上组装成整架飞机。但无论如何，这就是规模。所以，对于每个组件，它们都要经过这种测试。

And just to give a context for scale and there are 700 unique components on the aircraft designed from scratch by Zipline. We are designing not just the flight computer from scratch, the power distribution board, the motor controllers, the battery, the battery management system, the you know, the pod is the smaller robot that we're using to actually make deliveries to people's homes. There's an entire Nvidia GPU-powered flight computer on the pod. We're building the electronics that go into the docking station where the Zip is flying in and out of. All of that, even the electric motor being designed from scratch by Zipline because we need a thrust-to-weight ratio that is not available in off-the-shelf electric motors. So, you have to design something from scratch. So, you know, 700 unique components, 43 major sub-assemblies on the aircraft, all then coming together on the manufacturing line that you both have gotten to visit. And getting assembled into one overall aircraft. But anyway, that's the scale. So, for each of those components, they're all going through this type of testing.

而且你知道，想想其他行业，很多时候我和汽车或航空航天领域的人交谈，他们可能会说：“嘿，你怎么看待可靠性挑战？”常见的回答是：“嗯，我问供应商零件的可靠性是多少。”然后我说：“好吧，酷。那如果我们就是供应商呢？”所以，无论如何，我们就是那种垂直整合，在地面进行组件测试，在地面进行系统测试，我们把整架飞机以及系统的其他部分放在振动台、风洞、可以走进去的热 chambers 里，所有这些，都是为了了解它会如何失效，对吧？不仅仅是“够不够好”？我们想知道它会如何失效。然后我们就能明白，好吧，酷，让我们改进它。或者也许像：“哦，那不太令人担忧。太好了。”你知道，我们没有以我们担心的方式失效。它以那种方式失效了。太棒了。所以，我们不只是想说：“我们运行了测试活动，没有失败。我们完成了。”而是：“不，不，让我们把它推向失效，对吧？让我们看看极限在哪里。”

And what you know, thinking about other industries, often times when I talk to people from maybe automotive or aerospace some of these like, "Hey, how do you think about reliability challenges?" And a common answer is like, "Well, I ask the supplier what the reliability of the part is." And I'm like, "Okay, cool. Like, what if we're the supplier, you know?" So, anyway, so we're that vertical integration where we have component testing on the ground, we have system testing on the ground where we're taking full aircraft for you know, and as well as other parts of the system and putting them through vibration tables, wind tunnels, thermal chambers you can walk into, like all of these things um in order to understand is how is this going to break, right? More than just is it good enough? Like, we want to know how it's going to break. And then we can understand, okay, cool. Like, let's make it better. Or maybe it's like, "Oh, that's not too worrisome. Like, great." You know, we didn't break any of the ways we were worried about. It broke in that way. Fantastic. So, like, we don't just want to say, "We ran the test campaign and nothing failed. We're done." It's like, "No, no, let's take this thing to failure, right? Let's see where the limits are."

49°C，那非常热。

49° C, which is very hot.

热。冷。

Hot. Cold.

-25°C，那非常冷。

-25° C, which is very cold.

所有的情况，是的。

All the things, yeah.

你不会在 49°C 的地方飞行。

You don't fly anywhere at 49° C.

你会吗？如果我们不担心，就不会在 49°C 下测试。你在哪里会在 49°C 飞行？

You do? That's what we wouldn't test at 49 if we're not worried about it. Where are you flying at 49?

我想是夏天的凤凰城。

I think Phoenix during the summer.

夏天的凤凰城，是的。

Phoenix during the summer, yeah.

那么，-25 度在哪里？

So, and then where's -25?

所以，在美国北部地区。

So, northern parts of the United States.

其实我很好奇你们怎么看这个问题。我可以想象一个不同的世界，你们会说：‘嘿，如果太热我们就不飞了。’如果太冷我们也不飞。如果雨太大我们也不飞。

Actually curious what you guys think about that. Like I could imagine a different version of the world where you guys are like, 'Hey look, if it's too hot we're just not going to fly.' And if it's too cold we're just not going to fly. And if it's raining too hard we're just not going to fly.

完全同意。

Totally.

而且这里面有权衡取舍，你知道，显然你的客户希望你随时都能飞。但你们是怎么考虑这些权衡的？

And there are trade-offs to be made, you know, and obviously your customers would prefer that you fly at all times. But how do you think about those trade-offs?

考虑这个权衡最简单的方式，是因为 Zipline 最初的应用场景。

The easiest way to think about the trade-off was because of the use cases that Zipline started with.

没错。

That's right.

基本上就是拯救生命。

Which was basically saving lives.

是啊，只要阳光明媚，你就可以把生命和你所爱之人的生命托付给我们。

Yeah, you can count on us with your life and the lives of your loved ones as long as the sun is shining.

这并不太有说服力，你知道的。

It's not super compelling, you know.

Zipline 会飞，事实上，在最初几年我们承担了很多风险。我们基本上会飞。我们想：‘听着，如果这是一次拯救生命的配送，有人命悬一线，我们就要去尝试。’而且我们有一个民航管理局，在这方面通常是我们很好的合作伙伴。我们承担了很多风险，学到了很多，而且几乎总是成功地挽救了那个人的生命。最坏的情况是，我们有一个降落伞翼，这是 Zipline 的最后安全机制——我们可以给飞机打开降落伞，让它轻轻落地。

Zipline would fly, and in fact, for the first couple of years we took a lot of risk. We would basically fly. We were like, 'Look, if it's a life-saving delivery happening and there's someone whose life is on the line, we're going to go for it.' And we had a civilian aviation authority that was generally a great partner with us on that front. We took a lot of risk, we learned a lot, and almost always it worked out in favor of saving the person's life. And the worst thing that could happen was, we had a parawing, which is Zipline's safety mechanism of last resort—we can pull a parachute on the aircraft and bring it gently to the ground.

这种情况多久发生一次？

How often does that happen?

我们学到了很多。在最初几年这种情况经常发生，但现在非常非常罕见。打个比方，我们最初的目标是比汽车安全 10 倍。实际上，阿尔弗雷德在上次董事会上推动了这个目标，他说：‘那是个扯淡的目标。我们需要比 Waymo 安全两倍。’于是埃里克真的去重新设定了目标，现在 Zipline 今年年底的目标是比 Waymo 安全两倍。他说：‘汽车？那是过时的技术。’

We learned a lot. It happened very often in the first few years, but very, very rare today. To put it into perspective, our original goal was to be 10 times safer than cars. Actually, Alfred was the one pushing in our last board meeting; he's like, 'That's a BS goal. We need to be two times safer than Waymo.' And so Eric literally went and reset the goal, and now Zipline's target for the end of this year is to be two times safer than Waymo. He's like, 'Cars? That's archaic technology.'

Waymo 大概是 10 倍，对吧？

Waymo I think is about 10X, right?

他们比汽车安全大约 10 倍，10 到 12 倍。

They're about 10X safer than cars, 10 to 12.

所以我们的目标是比 Waymo 安全两倍。

So our goal is to be 2X safer than Waymo.

是的。

Yeah.

而且正确的比较是——你在飞行。你必须在空中安全，而不是在地面上安全。

And the right comparison—you're flying. You have to be safe in the air, not safe on the ground.

我们替代的是通常用汽车完成的事情，所以这有争议。但可以说，我们现在有 1.4 亿商业自动驾驶里程，零安全事故。

We're substituting something that's typically going in cars, so it's debatable. But suffice it to say, we now have 140 million commercial autonomous miles and zero safety incidents.

零。

Zero.

如果你开车行驶 1.4 亿英里，你会发生 600 起事故，100 人受伤，还有 2 到 6 人死亡，具体取决于你所在的国家。这就是为什么我们非常自豪于选择正确的应用场景。这是拯救生命，而且去做真的很有意义。而且，我们一定会，天哪，我们会在工程、测试和验证方面尽可能做到人类能做到的安全。我们真的把这当作公司 DNA 的深层部分。最后一点：埃里克所说的所有测试的结果是什么？结果是，我们的商业机队中有个别飞机已经飞行了超过一百万商业自动驾驶英里。所以我认为人们，从直觉的角度，很多人看到这个会说：‘哇，它看起来可能有点精致或脆弱，可能对极端条件或天气非常敏感。’我的意思是，如果你有一辆行驶了一百万英里的汽车，请举手。

If you were to drive 140 million miles, you would have 600 accidents, 100 injuries, and somewhere between two and six fatalities depending on what country you're talking about. This is why we really pride ourselves in picking the right use cases. It's life-saving and it really makes a lot of sense to go do it. And also, we're going to be, by God, we're going to be as safe as humanly possible from an engineering and testing and validation perspective. We really take that—that's a deep part of the DNA of the company. One last point: what is the outcome of all of that testing that Eric is talking about? The outcome is we have individual aircraft in the commercial fleet that have flown more than a million commercial autonomous miles. So I think people, from an intuition perspective, a lot of people look at this and they're like, 'Wow, it kind of seems maybe exquisite or fragile, probably very sensitive to extreme conditions or weather.' I mean, raise your hand if you have a car that has a million miles on it.

这相当令人印象深刻。

It's pretty impressive.

这些系统已经比人们想象的要坚固、耐用和强健得多。

These systems are already way more rugged and durable and robust than people necessarily think.

我能问问你关于精度的问题吗？比如，当我看到一些视频时，让我震惊的一件事是——我还没有机会亲自体验一次配送。

Can I ask you about the precision? Like one of the things that blew my mind when I saw some of the—I haven't had a chance to experience in person, you know, a delivery.

帕特里克。

Patrick.

我确实去体验过。但只是看视频，无人机在 100 英尺高空，它放下包裹，把包裹降到一个——我不知道——半径 18 英寸的圆圈之类的地方，对吧？你们是怎么做到如此精准的，即使在大风天、下雨天？你们是怎么做到的？

I got to go experience it. But just in watching the videos, the drone's 100 ft up and it drops the package, it lowers the package to a—I don't know—a circle that's got an 18-in radius or whatever it is, right? Like how do you guys achieve such precision even when it's windy, even when it's raining? How do you pull that off?

首先，飞机大约在 100 米高空。

First of all, the aircraft's about 100 meters up.

100 米高。好的，是的，就是这样。

100 meters up. Okay, yeah, there you go.

这让它更难了。而且有多层机制。有配送舱降下来，对吧？所以配送舱降下来。那才是配送和取件的精度部分。无人机悬停在上方。它知道目标在哪里。比如说，假设是这张咖啡桌，如果我们头顶没有屋顶的话。所以是这张咖啡桌，飞机要悬停在上方，但它实际上需要考虑风况。所以如果风向一个方向吹，飞机就会稍微向上风偏移。所以它会向那个方向偏移以应对风况。然后它会放下配送舱。正如凯勒提到的，我们确实利用了 GNSS，也就是实时动态 GNSS。这能给你厘米级的定位信心。但问题是，我们不知道这张桌子的 GPS 坐标。不是有人来测量了桌子的中心然后把坐标发给我们。没人想这么做。所以我们要做的是，我们用那个来接近。我们想：‘好的，这是后院。这里我们大概知道东西的位置。’然后这个配送舱的任务就是被放下来，对抗风况，对抗这些不同的因素，并利用其机载感知自主系统来识别哪里是放包裹的最佳位置。比如如果有一张小桌子，上面放着一堆饮料，我可能不应该试图降落在这些饮料上面弄乱它们。也许我应该降在桌子旁边的地面上。所以它有这些自主的机载实时计算能力，能够识别我在看什么，我看到了什么，以及我如何找到放包裹的最佳位置。然后降下来，接触地面，打开舱门，然后被收回，就这样，包裹留在地面上，配送舱升回来，收起，飞机飞回家。

It makes it harder. And there are multiple layers. There's the delivery pod that comes down, right? So the delivery pod comes down. That's really the delivery and pick-up precision part of it. The drone is hovering above. It knows where the target is. Maybe let's say it's this coffee table, for example, if there wasn't a roof above us. So it's this coffee table, and the aircraft is going to hover above, but it actually needs to consider what the wind conditions are. So if the wind's blowing in one direction, then the aircraft's going to kind of be shifted upwind. So it's going to shift in the direction to help with those wind conditions. And then it's going to lower that delivery pod down. As Keller mentioned, we do take advantage of GNSS, so real-time kinematic GNSS. That gives you centimeter-level confidence of where you are. But the thing is, we don't know the GPS coordinates of this table. It's not like someone came in and surveyed the middle of the table and sent us the coordinates. No one wants to do that. So what we have to do is we use that to kind of get close. We're like, 'Okay, here's the backyard. Here's where we kind of know things roughly are.' And then the job of this delivery pod is to be lowered down, fight the wind conditions, fight these different things, and be able to use its onboard perception autonomy systems to identify where's the best place for me to leave the package. Like if there's a little table and there's a whole bunch of drinks, probably I shouldn't try and drop down on top of these drinks and make a mess. Maybe I should go to the ground right next to the table. And so it has these autonomous, onboard real-time compute to be able to identify what am I looking at, what am I seeing, and how can I find the best place to leave the package. And then come down, touch the ground, opens its doors, gets retracted back up, and there you go, the package is left on the ground, and the delivery pod comes back up, stows, and the aircraft flies back home.

有几个很大的优势，具体来说吧。那个吊舱，它不仅有自己的英伟达 GPU 运行自己的 AI 自动驾驶系统，所以它

A couple big advantages, I mean, just to be specific. So that pod, it not only has its own Nvidia GPU running its own AI autonomy stack, so it

是的，还能勘察，并且确切知道它在哪投递，即使在晚上。

Yeah, and survey and like know exactly where it's delivering, even at night.

嗯。

Yeah.

但它也控制自己的位置

But um it's it's also controlling its own position

没错。

That's right.

在 X 和 Y 轴上，所以它能

in the X and Y axis, so it can

嗯。

Yeah.

它不仅能知道，还能移动。嗯，这种架构的优势，你大概能猜到，但这样做有两个巨大的好处。一是安静。人们有这种印象，我是说，首先，大多数无人机真的非常烦人。那种声音基本上是人类能忍受的最刺耳、最烦人的声音。所以，你知道，我们 Zipline 有一支庞大的空气动力学、气动声学和控制专家团队。车辆的每个部分都考虑声音设计，让车辆尽可能安静。我们希望它的声音不超过树叶在树间轻轻摇动的声音。嗯，当吊舱投递时，我们把主飞行器保持在 100 米高空。所以，产生噪音的东西离得很远。从安全角度看，这也是巨大的好处。因为唯一接近你、你的家人、你的宠物、你的孩子的东西，是超级可爱和安全的东西。你知道，它真的像泡沫塑料，像一种可爱的拟人化泡沫塑料

it it can not just know, but then move. Um and the advantage of that architecture, which you can probably guess, but there are two huge advantages of doing it in this way. One is it's quiet. People have this perception of I mean, first of all, most drones are really freaking annoying. Like the sound is just It's basically the most grating annoying sound that you could possibly subject a human to. And so, you know, like we Zipline has a big team of aerodynamics, aeroacoustics, and controls experts. Every part of the vehicle is designed with sound in mind for the vehicle to be as quiet as humanly possible. We want it to be no louder than the sound of like gentle leaves moving in trees. Um and for the when the pod is delivering, we're keeping the main aircraft 100 m in the air. So, it's like the thing that is creating noise is really far away. That's also a huge benefit from a safety perspective. Because the only thing that is coming anywhere close to you, your family, your pets, your kids, is something that is super cute and safe. And it's you know, it's really like a Styrofoam kind of like a cute anthropomorphic Styrofoam

桶

tub

桶。

tub.

嗯。这项技术在美国之外测试了多久才进入美国？现在你们在达拉斯飞行并投递包裹，进入美国的路径是怎样的？

Yeah. How long was the technology tested outside the United States before it came to the United States? And was the path to getting into the US now that you're flying in Dallas and delivering packages there?

我们花了 8 年，我想，对吧？大约大约大约 8 年。我是说，取决于你怎么衡量，也许六到八年。然后，我是说，我们 2016 年在卢旺达推出了商业服务。我们真正推出这种下一代家庭投递服务，也就是现在处于疯狂超大规模扩张模式的东西，那是在去年一月才推出的。所以，取决于你怎么衡量，你甚至可以说差不多 9 年。

We spent 8 years, I think, right? About about about 8 years. I mean, I depending on how you measure it, maybe like six six to eight years. And then it was I mean, we launched in Rwanda in 2016, our commercial service. And we really launched the this kind of next generation home delivery service, the thing that's now like in sort of insane hyper scaling mode. That only launched January of last year. So, depending on how you measure it, you could even say it was like almost 9 years.

然后你们到了美国，就一帆风顺吗？你们必须经历什么样的监管路径？

And then when you got to the US, was it just smooth sailing? What What was the sort of regulatory path that you had to go through?

是的，我是说，我们真正开始，我想说，你知道，大约 2020 年左右，与美国联邦航空管理局（FAA）和其他美国监管机构进行有意义的接触。嗯，所以，这并不意味着我们在 2025 年出现，一切就一帆风顺。这真的是一种合作，通过你提到的 2016 年那种方式，所有这些东西都没有路径。就像我们之前开玩笑说的，这有点违法。所以，嗯，是的，我们真的是一种合作，来确定，“嘿，你知道，我们有共同的目标，对吧？我们的共同目标是安全高效的空域整合。所以，虽然我们在不同国家有成功做到这一点的经验，嗯，我们可以带来一些经验，我们对这应该如何运作有看法，监管机构对他们认为应该如何运作也有看法。所以，这是一项持续几年的合作，来确定这些路径是什么样的，以及我们如何在能够执行之前达成一致和协调。

Yeah, I mean, we really started, I would say, you know, like meaningfully engaging with US, what you know, FAA and other um regulators in the US around 2020 or so. Um so, it doesn't mean we didn't show up in 2025 and everything was smooth sailing. It was really a partnership of working through um as you mentioned in kind of 2016, all of this stuff was there was no pathways. It's kind of illegal as we as we joked earlier. And so, um yeah, so we really was a partnership to identify, "Hey, you know, we have a shared goals, right? Our shared goals are safe and efficient airspace integration. And so, while we have uh experience doing that successfully in different countries, uh we can bring some of that experience and we have opinions on how this should work, the regulators had opinions on maybe how they thought it should work. And so, it was a partnership over the course of a couple years to identify what those paths look like and how we could kind of converge and align before we were able to execute on that.

你们还必须展示管理所有这些飞行中的飞机的能力。所以，你们编写了系统，你们构建了系统。

And you had to show your ability to manage all these aircrafts that are flying. So, you wrote systems, you built systems.

是的，我认为这是很大的一部分，你知道，Keller 提到无人机只是整个系统、整个复杂性的一部分。我们真正构建的是一个基础设施层，对吧？我们正在构建一个基础设施层，能够实现即时获取产品。你不是用一架飞机从一个地方飞到另一个地方来做到这一点的。你是通过一个充电站网络、数百架分布在一个区域的飞机，以及云端的自主系统来实现的，这些系统能理解我在哪里有需求，哪里有供应，哪里有飞机，嗯，接下来是什么，即将到来的晚餐高峰，嗯，这些不同地点的天气如何，我如何自我平衡这些事情，以及我如何高效地，嗯，在需要时引入人员，对吧？所以，这些飞机是自主的，它们在运行，这些飞行不需要人工干预，嗯，但有时提醒一个人是有意义的，“嘿，也许这里有问题，或者天气有点，嗯，风在这个区域，对吧？”所以，有人类，你知道，训练有素的航空专业人员，在监控我们的，我称之为，我们的网络。

Yeah, I think it's a huge part of, you know, Keller's mentioning that the drone is only a part of the of the, you know, of the overall system, the overall complexity. What we're really building is an infrastructure layer, right? We're building an infrastructure layer that can enable instant access to products. And you don't do that with one aircraft flying from one place to another place. You do that with a network of um charging locations, hundreds of aircraft uh spread across an area that uh with the autonomous systems in the in the cloud that can understand where am I having demand, where do I have supply, where do I have aircraft, um what's coming up is about to be the dinner rush, uh what's the weather at these different locations, how can I kind of self-balance these things, as well as how do I efficiently uh pull like pull in people when needed, right? So, these these aircraft are autonomous, they're operating, they don't require human intervention through these flights, uh but there are times in which it makes sense to alert a person that, "Hey, maybe there's there's an issue here or the weather is a little bit uh the wind is is in this area, right?" So, there are humans, you know, trained aviation professionals that are monitoring our like our network, I would call it.

他们是舰队指挥官。

They're fleet commanders.

舰队指挥官，没错。

Fleet commanders, that's right.

我们以前叫他们飞行员，

We used to call them pilots,

你知道，因为我们最初在美国推出时，我们获得的第一个监管许可是 1 对 1 飞行。所以，那意味着我们有一个飞行员坐在

you know, cuz when we originally launched in the US, the first regulatory permission we got was to fly one to one. So, that meant that we had one pilot sitting in an

远程机长。

Remote pilot in command.

坐在办公室里，基本上只是观察一架飞机做它的事情。再说一次，你知道，人类需要向车辆发出任何命令的情况极其罕见。

who was sitting in an office basically just observing an aircraft do its thing. And again, you know, it's exceedingly rare that a human should ever have

向车辆发出任何命令，但我们会有一个人看一架飞机。这对单位经济不太有利。嗯，但随着 Zipline 证明了这些系统，我们从 1 对 1 到 1 对 3，1 对 6，1 对 20，1 对 40，现在运营 1 对 100，并有计划远远超过这个数字。

to issue any kind of a command to a vehicle, but we would have one human watching one aircraft. Not great for unit economics. Uh but as Zipline proved out these systems, we went from one to one to one to three, one to six, one to 20, one to 40, and now operating one to 100, and have plans to go well beyond that.

嗯，现在一个舰队指挥官。

Well, one fleet fleet commander now.

所以，是的，我们在技术上改了名字，因为我觉得“飞行员”这个词容易混淆。所以，我们受到《安德的游戏》的启发。我们现在把 Zipline 的这群人称为舰队指挥官。而且实际上在 FAA 的文件里，我们写着“舰队指挥官应执行以下操作”。是的，他们监督着 100 架飞机。对我来说，这是技术令人兴奋和酷的地方，因为人们会想，嗯，你知道，人类过去是怎么解决这个问题的？事实并非如此，你知道，机器人让人类提升层次，这很酷，对吧？就像人类仍然在战略性地管理系统。只是人类现在在维护和指挥机器人，而不是自己做实际工作。

So, yeah, we technically changed the name cuz I think pilot's confusing. So, we're inspired by Ender's Game. We now call these this group of this team of people at Zipline, we call them fleet commanders. And I'd actually says that in the FAA documentation, we say fleet commander shall do the following. And yeah, they are overseeing a group of 100 aircraft. And to me, this is like the exciting cool thing about technology cuz people think about like, well, you know, what about um you know, how humans used to solve this problem? It's like it's not, you know, the it it it it's cool how robots enable humans to like up level, right? Like the human is still getting to like strategically manage the system. It's just the human is now maintaining and commanding robots rather than like doing the actual work herself.

现在你们处于超大规模模式，在过去 10 或 15 年里解决了这么多问题。你们遇到了什么新问题？

Now that you guys are kind of in hyper scale mode, you solved so many problems in the last 10 or 15 years. What new problems are you running into?

是的，我是说，从主题上讲，我之前提到过，你知道，达到 250 万次投递，你知道，这每隔几年才发生一次。这有点像百万分之一的机会。

Yeah, I mean, what I would say like thematically, I I mentioned earlier that as you know, getting to 2.5 million deliveries, the you know, the it only happens every couple of years. It's like kind of a one in a million chances.

这些事情开始变得重要了，对吧？我们正朝着每天一百万次配送的目标前进。如果出现百万分之一的概率事件，那它每天都会发生，对吧？

These things start to matter, right? We're on the path towards a million deliveries every day. And if you have a one in a million situation, it's going to happen every single day, right?

是的，我能把这点说清楚吗？Zipline 从 2014 年开始构建最初版本的技术，到 2024 年才完成第一批一百万次配送。是 2024 年底吗？实际上可能甚至是 2025 年初，我们才完成了公司历史上的累计一百万次配送。

Yeah, can I just make that really clear? So, it took Zipline from 2014 when we started building the original version of the technology to 2024 to do our first million deliveries. Was it the end of 2024? Maybe it was even early 2025 actually that we had done a million deliveries in the cumulative history of the company.

嗯。

Yeah.

所以，这差不多是十年。可以说大约十年才完成一百万次配送。而 Zipline 在不久的将来每天就要完成一百万次配送。这确实令人敬畏。就像，哇，好吧。我们过去解决问题的一切方式都将被打破。门槛大大提高了。

So, it's almost a decade. Maybe say about a decade to do a million deliveries. Zipline is now in the very near future going to be doing a million deliveries a day. And so, that is definitely humbling. It's like, wow, okay. Everything about the way we've been solving the problem is going to break. The bar goes way way up.

嗯。

Yeah.

我的意思是，你知道，一个具体的例子，维护变得非常困难。比如，问题的规模、你管理的车队车辆数量、出错或某个流程运行效率极低的成本变得极高。因此，所有这些系统都有很高的关键性。

And I mean, you know, one specific example, maintenance becomes really hard. Like, the scale of the problems, the number of vehicles that you're managing in the fleet, the cost of a screw-up or if a certain process is operating in very inefficient ways becomes extremely high. And so, there's just high degree of criticality for all these systems.

不过有一个有趣的点，我认为人们还没有充分认识到自主性的优势。一个很好的例子是，系统希望全天候运行。它确实全天候运行。所以，我认为人们习惯于物流是这样的：嗯，这是人类驾驶卡车的时间。但这些系统不是这样运作的。它们希望全天候运行。它们可以被充分利用。它们可以在凌晨 2 点或 3 点愉快地配送，这样你早上 6 点起床去上班前，东西就已经在你家门口或后院准备好了，就像它们在下午 2 点配送一样。它们可以在 5 分钟内送达。它们 100% 的时间都可用。

One interesting point though, there are a lot of ways that these systems operate that I think people don't yet appreciate the advantages of autonomy. One good example is that the system wants to operate 24/7. It does operate 24/7. So, I think people are used to logistics being like, well, here are the hours when humans are driving trucks. That's not how these systems operate. They want to operate 24/7. They can be fully utilized. They can be as happily delivering at 2:00 a.m. and 3:00 a.m. delivering something so it's ready for you on your doorstep or in your backyard when you wake up at 6:00 a.m. before you go to work as they are delivering at 2:00 p.m. They can deliver in 5 minutes. They are available 100% of the time.

我们很快将让飞行器直接从南旧金山的工厂飞入商业运营。如果你见过特斯拉 Model 3 和 Model Y 自动驾驶交付给客户，Zipline 的飞机将直接从工厂飞入运营。从维护角度看，这是一个巨大的优势：一旦飞行器需要进行某种预防性维护，它会自行飞到维护站。然后人类可以快速完成任何必要流程，之后飞行器再自行飞回运营。我们还可以根据系统看到的情况，动态分配城市中的运力。飞行器没有固定的家。它可以去任何需要它的地方。

We are soon going to be flying vehicles straight out of our factory in South San Francisco into commercial operation. If you've seen Tesla Model 3's and Model Y's delivering themselves to customers, Zipline aircraft will fly straight from the factory into operation. It's a huge advantage from a maintenance perspective that as soon as a vehicle needs to go through some kind of proactive maintenance, it will fly itself to the maintenance depot. So, the human can then quickly do whatever process necessary and then the vehicle flies itself back into operations. We can also dynamically assign capacity in a metro based on what the system is seeing. There's no set home for a vehicle. It can go to wherever it's needed.

是的，我想回答你关于每天一百万次配送以及新挑战的问题，我认为 Keller 已经提到了一些。回到之前关于无人机只占问题 15% 的想法。实际上，问题在于我们目前制造飞机、维护飞机、支持所有这些事情、排查问题的方式。我们今天的做法在每天一百万次配送时行不通。所以，仍然需要更好的工具、更好的软件系统、更好的流程、更好的所有这些。所以，就像 Elon 所说的设计制造机器的机器。因此，这确实是我看到 Zipline 在未来几年要解决的问题之一，我们将更多地投资于制造和运行机器的机器。

Yeah, I think to your question about getting to a million a day and what are the new challenges, I think Keller hit on some of them. To the previous thought about the drone is only 15% of the problem. Really, it's the way that we currently manufacture aircraft, maintain aircraft, support all these things, troubleshoot problems. Like, the way that we do it today isn't going to work when we're at a million deliveries a day. And so, there's still like, okay, we need better tools, we need better software systems, we need better processes, we need better all these things. So, it's like, Elon talks about designing the machine that builds the machine. And so, this is really one of the things that I see Zipline tackling over the coming couple years is we're going to be investing much more in the machines that build and run the machines.

嗯。

Mhm.

我的意思是，从规模角度看，我认为美国最大的航空公司每天大约执行 5,000 次航班。

I mean, from a scale perspective, I think the largest airline in the US is doing about 5,000 flights a day.

嗯。

Yeah.

Zipline 将在下个月超越这个数字。当我们达到每天一百万次配送时，Zipline 在美国商业空域执行的航班量将大约是其他所有航空公司总和的大约 40 到 80 倍。

Zipline is going to surpass that in the next month. And when we get to a million deliveries a day, Zipline will be doing like somewhere between, I don't know, 40 and 80 times as many flights in the US in commercial airspace as all other airlines combined.

嗯。

Yeah.

所以，这显然是不同的类别，完全不同的飞机类别，完全不同的问题，但现实是，当你看到空中交通管制时，他们并不区分。所以，当你谈到所有必须建立的辅助系统时，空中交通管制将发生巨大的转变，因为我们开始意识到，人们对车辆电气化感到兴奋，人们对自动驾驶汽车感到兴奋。现实是，随着这些转变的发生，空中的自动驾驶车辆数量将是我们称之为道路的这些微小、古老、受限的东西上使用的 10 倍。所以，天空是一个很大的地方。利用它是有意义的。你可以把地球还给人类。你可以让社区更安静、更安全、更少污染、更少交通。如果我们能更有效地利用天空，我们可以对地球做出巨大的改进。这将需要对美国空中交通管制的思考方式进行巨大的转变。这意味着我们需要以 AI 和自主性为设计理念，而不是像 1950 年那样用铅笔、纸和记事卡，以及人类向外看试图观察飞机的方式来设计。

And so, it's obviously a different class, it's a completely different class of aircraft, it's a totally different kind of problem, but the reality is when you look at air traffic control, they don't make a distinction. And so, there's also when you talk about all the auxiliary systems that have to be built, there is a huge transformation that's going to have to happen in air traffic control as we start to realize that people are really excited about electrification of vehicles, people are excited about autonomous vehicles. The reality is as those transformations occur, there are going to be 10 times as many autonomous vehicles in the air as there are using these teeny archaic constrained things that we call roads. And so like the sky is a big place. It makes sense to utilize it. You can give Earth back to humans. You can make neighborhoods quieter, safer, less pollution, less traffic. You can make huge improvements to Earth if we can more effectively utilize the sky. This is going to require huge transformation of how we think about air traffic control in the US. And it means that we need to design it with AI and autonomy in mind rather than the way it was designed which was in 1950 using pencils and paper and note cards and like a human looking out trying to watch the airplane.

你们在帮助 FAA 设计这个吗？

Are you helping the FAA to design that?

确实是的，我的意思是，需要发生的是协作创新，这是一种说法，对吧？如果一家公司为自己解决这个问题，并不能为整个行业解决问题。所以我们深度参与其中，我的意思是，首先，我们认为解决方案的关键部分是飞机应该相互通信。它们应该告诉彼此自己的位置。它们应该自动检测到，嘿，前方有冲突。因此，我们会，你知道，你上升，我下降，对吧？这类事情。我们的飞机就是这样做的。我们正在与其他进入空域的新参与者合作，包括自主飞机和自主无人机，做同样的事情。确保我们的系统能与他们的系统通信，我们都能协作，确保空域的高效和安全使用。我们也，正如你所说 Alfred，正在与监管机构、标准机构合作，将我们和其他人开发的一些最佳实践和创新，努力使其被广泛接受和使用，这样我们都能协作，都能安全高效地使用空域。

It's really yeah, I mean what needs to happen is like collaborative innovation is one way to put it, right? It's like if one company solving this problem for themselves is not going to solve the problem for the industry. And so we are heavily involved in I mean first of all, what a key part of the solution we believe is aircraft should be talking to each other. They should be telling each other where they are. They should be automatically detecting that hey, there's a conflict on the horizon here. And so therefore we're going to you know, you go up, I go down, right? These kinds of things. And our aircraft do that. And we're working with other new entrants into the airspace with autonomous aircraft and autonomous drones to do the same thing. To make sure that our systems can talk to their systems and we can all collaborate to make sure it's efficient and safe usage of the airspace. We're also to your point Alfred working with regulators, working with standards bodies to take some of these best practices and innovations that we and others have developed and try and make them broadly accepted and utilized so that we can all collaborate and we can all safely and efficiently use the airspace.

因为我们在其他所有国家推出时，必须从零开始构建，所以我们真的从零开始做了。我们向民航当局提供了所有这些软件，让他们能够用来监控空域中这一全新类别的自主飞行器。有趣的是，美国有多家市值超过 100 亿美元的空中交通管制软件上市公司。所以我经常看着这个——我觉得 Zipline 内部有很多公司，就像‘哦，那是一家 Zipline 内部的上市公司，必须从零开始建’。我们之所以要建，是因为生态系统的每个部分，我们都必须从零开始构建，才能让整体技术蓬勃发展。

Because we were launching in all these other countries, we had to build something from scratch, and so we built the thing from scratch. We provided all this software to the civil aviation authorities so that they could use it to monitor this entirely new class of autonomous vehicles in the airspace. Interestingly, there are multiple public companies in the United States that build air traffic control software that are worth more than 10 billion dollars. And so it's like I often look at that—I think there are many companies inside Zipline that are like, 'Oh, that's like a public company inside Zipline that is having to get built from scratch.' We're building it because every part of the ecosystem we sort of had to build from scratch to enable the overall technology to flourish.

空中交通管制很有意思——你了解得越多，就越觉得不安。我们开始看到影响了。你读到几个月前一架飞机在华盛顿特区撞上直升机。你读到两架飞机在机场滑行道上相撞——我不记得一个月前是在哪里了。你会想：‘哇，为什么所有这些事故都在发生？’结果发现 50% 的空中交通管制员年龄超过 45 岁，20% 即将退休，而现在美国没有人把空中交通管制当作职业道路。所以实际上这类工作存在巨大的劳动力危机。因此，你从不同角度都感受到转型的压力。我们不能使用一个为 1950 年代空域设计的系统。即使我们想，也没有劳动力去做，而且还有大量新技术涌入——AI 和自主飞行器——这将要求我们改变这些系统的运作方式。

Air traffic control is interesting—the more you learn, the more disturbing it is. We're starting to see the impact. You read about a plane crashing into a helicopter in DC a few months ago. You read about two planes colliding on a taxiway at an airport—I don't remember where that was a month ago. You're like, 'Wow, why are all these accidents happening?' Turns out 50% of air traffic controllers are over the age of 45, 20% are about to retire, and nobody is going into air traffic control as a career path right now in the US. So there's actually a huge labor crisis around these kinds of jobs. And so you have pressure coming from different angles for transformation. We cannot use a system that was designed for airspace in the 1950s. The labor isn't available to do it even if we wanted to, and also there is this giant influx of new technology—AI and autonomous vehicles—that are going to require us to transform how these systems work.

所以你们既是硬件公司又是软件公司。你们制造——你们自己设计零件。你们自己制造飞机。你们自己编写软件。你们自己做运营。这看起来是一家高度垂直整合的公司。谈谈完全垂直整合相对于购买零部件或购买组件软件再组装起来的优势吧。

So you're a hardware company and a software company. You build—you design your own parts. You build your own aircraft. You write your own software. You do your own operations. This looks like a pretty vertically integrated company. Talk about the benefits of complete vertical integration versus buying component parts or buying component software and putting it all together.

还有，你们如何让来自如此不同学科和领域的人达成共识并协作共事？

And how do you get people who come from such different disciplines and domains to see eye to eye and work together collaboratively?

是的。我的意思是，我觉得有趣的是，做这件事真是让人头疼得要命，你绝不会主动去做。就像，我桌子上方有一面旗子，上面写着：‘我们做这件事不是因为容易，而是因为我们以为它会容易。’

Yeah. I mean, I think that interestingly, doing it is such an incredible pain in the butt that you would never do it. Like, I have this flag over my desk that says, 'We do this not because it is easy, but because we thought that it would be easy.'

而这正是 Zipline 的定义。这实际上太痛苦了，如果你看看所有这些硬件公司的历史，它们一开始都试图不这么做。比如你看 Roadster，对吧？他们想：‘我们要用 Lotus Elise 的底盘，从二级供应商那里买电池组，然后把两者拼在一起，会很棒的。’Roadster 亏了很多钱，也不太可靠，对吧？但它是通往 Model S 的重要一步。

And this is definitely the definition of Zipline. It's such a pain in the butt actually that if you look at the history of all these hardware companies, they all tried to not do it first. Like you can look at the Roadster, right? They're like, 'We're going to use a Lotus Elise chassis, we're going to buy the battery pack from a secondary supplier, and we're just going to put the two together and it's going to be awesome.' Roadster lost a lot of money and wasn't very reliable, right? But it was an important part of getting to the Model S.

Zipline 刚开始时，我们从供应商那里买所有东西。我们付钱让别人为我们设计系统的不同部分，或者试图购买现成的东西，然后我们摔了飞机。我的意思是，在测试场，我们摔了又摔，然后我们意识到：‘哇，这东西超级贵，而且完全不可靠。’所以一部分一部分地，你会说：‘好吧，把这个拆掉。我们要从头设计电机控制器。好，拆掉。我们要从头设计 GPS 模块。导航系统。’所以一部分一部分地，你把它拆掉。

Zipline, when we started, we were buying everything from suppliers. We were paying people to design different parts of the system for us or trying to buy off-the-shelf stuff, and we crashed airplanes. I mean, at test sites, we just crashed and crashed, and we realized, 'Wow, this stuff is super expensive and also totally unreliable.' So part by part, you're like, 'All right, rip that out. We'll design the motor controller from scratch. Okay, rip that out. We're going to have to design the GPS module from scratch. Navigation system.' So part by part, you sort of rip it out.

我认为有一个根本性的认识，可能和让 Model S 成为可能的那种认识类似：‘嘿，如果我们想在这个全新的技术领域打造一个真正伟大的特定产品，我们就必须从头设计每一个组件，以满足这个新领域的具体要求。’

I think there's a fundamental realization, probably similar to the realization that made the Model S possible: 'Hey, if we want to build a really great specific product in this totally new area of technology, we're going to have to design every single one of these components from scratch to meet the specific requirements of this new area.'

你可能会想：‘哦，无人机，已经有很多无人机了，因为大疆制造塑料四轴飞行器，他们生产了数百万架。美国购买了 2000 万美元的捕食者飞机，能以 100 英里/小时的速度飞行。’现实是，这两个系统实际上都非常不可靠，没有任何东西在可靠性和安全性以及单位经济性上达到 Zipline 试图开创的这个新行业所需的水平。所以我们意识到我们必须去构建一个汽车级的解决方案。它必须超级可靠，而且必须极具成本效益，因为你是在与汽车和摩托车竞争，而它们实际上非常经济。我的意思是，我们有 100 年的时间让它们变得可靠和便宜。

You might think, 'Oh, like drones, there are already lots of drones because DJI makes plastic quadcopters and they make millions of them. And the US buys $20 million Predator aircraft that can fly 100 mph.' The reality is actually both of these systems are very unreliable, and nothing is at a level of reliability and safety at unit economics that would work for this new industry that Zipline was trying to pioneer. So we realized we had to go build an automotive-grade solution. It has to be super reliable, and it has to be extremely cost-effective, because you're competing against cars and motorcycles, which are actually really cost-effective. I mean, we've had 100 years to make them reliable and cheap.

所以你永远不会故意这么做。也许你只是慢慢抓狂，在绝望中意识到：‘哇，我们必须把这一切拆掉，我们必须从头开始构建。’从零开始做的优势是速度和整合。

So you never do it intentionally. Maybe you just slowly freak out and through desperation realize, 'Wow, we got to tear all this out, and we got to build it all from scratch.' The advantage of doing it from scratch is speed and integration.

所以，你知道，我们的办公室——你们知道，因为你们去过——当你参观 Zipline 的办公室时，我们都像沙丁鱼一样挤在这栋小楼里，固件工程师旁边坐着机械工程师，旁边是自主性工程师，旁边是云基础设施，旁边是气动声学、制导导航控制、系统工程、制造——所有一切都在一个地方。然后我们的工厂只有 3 分钟车程。所以我们的团队在工厂车间工作，看到零件被集成到整个系统中，然后我们的测试场也只有很短的车程。所以你可以去测试场，观看飞行器飞行，观察系统表现如何。

So, you know, our offices—you guys know because you've been—when you visit Zipline's offices, we are all packed like sardines into this small building where you have firmware engineers sitting next to mechanical engineers sitting next to autonomy engineers sitting next to cloud infra sitting next to aero-acoustics, guidance navigation controls, systems engineering, manufacturing—everything, all in one place. And then our factory is a 3-minute drive away. So our team is on the factory floor working, seeing parts get integrated into the overall system, and then we have our test sites, which are just a short drive away. So you can go to the test sites, watch the vehicles flying, observe how the system is performing.

把所有这些东西结合在一起意味着东西总是在坏。事情总是出错。正如 Erica 所描述的，优势在于当事情出错时，我们基本上可以直接走到那个人的桌前，说：‘你和我今晚要通宵了。’

Combining all these things together means that stuff is always breaking. Stuff's always going wrong. As Erica described, the advantage is when the thing goes wrong, we can basically go straight to the person's desk and be like, 'You and I are pulling an all-nighter tonight.'

而如果你是波音公司，787 的电池出了问题，你会去起诉供应商，然后花上两年时间试图弄清楚是谁的错，而且这还牵扯到三层深的烂摊子，你知道，航空航天领域的采购协议和供应链就是这么运作的。这就是为什么它如此糟糕。

Whereas if you're Boeing and something's going wrong with the battery on the 787, you're going and suing a supplier and taking, you know, 2 years to try to figure out whose fault it is and it's three layers deep in the rats nest, you know, cluster of like how these procurement deals and supply chains work for aerospace. It's why it's so broken.

是的，我回想你刚才那个关于让不同学科的人一起工作的问题。说实话，我觉得这很容易。当你像 Keller 刚才提到的那样设置好，就很容易了，对吧？首先，每个人都朝着同一个方向划船。我们都有相同的目标。当你能把它建立在现实基础上，并且它是实实在在的，那么我们都只是为了解决同样的问题，对吧？

Yeah, I think back to your question there about getting these different discipline folks to work together. Honestly, I think it's quite easy. It's easy when you have set up the way that Keller just mentioned, right? Like first of all, everyone's rowing in the same direction. We all have the same goals. And when you can ground it in reality and it's tangible, then we're all just here to solve the same problems, right?

是的。

Yeah.

所以，实际上通过垂直整合，通过拥有一个非常多元化的团队，我们确实能穿透很多障碍，对吧？很多情况下，比如那个工程师不会告诉我实际源代码是做什么的，因为他们说那是知识产权，所以我们实际上不知道故障检测是什么样的，但在这里你不会有任何这些问题。你就像真的走过去，坐在那个人桌边，然后说：“嘿，我们那个测试失败了。给我讲讲系统这部分是怎么工作的。”

So, we actually with a vertical integration, with having a very diverse team, we actually cut through a lot of the stuff, right? A lot of the things that happen where oh, you know, that engineer won't tell me what the actual source code does because they said it's IP and so we don't actually know what the fault detection looks like and you don't have any of that. You just like literally go walk over, sit next to the person's desk and be like, "Hey, we failed that test. Tell me about how this part of the system works."

嗯。

Mhm.

哦，酷。把代码调出来。太好了。我们来看看。哦，有意思。你是这么假设的？我不是这么设计的，对吧？酷。我们来把它弄个水落石出，对吧？所以这种快速协作的理念，就是制造团队、运营团队、工程团队都真正地在一起，这才是解决这些问题的方法，而且我发现这其实并不难，对吧？当你有了这些要素，它实际上会让事情变得相当快速和高效。

Oh, cool. Pull up the code. Great. Let's look through it. Oh, interesting. You're making that assumption? That's not how I designed it, right? Cool. Let's get to the bottom of it, right? And so this idea of just rapid collaboration where you just, you know, the manufacturing team, the operations team, the engineering team are all just like really together is the way to solve these problems and I found that it's actually not that hard, right? When you have those ingredients, it actually makes it, you know, it makes it pretty fast and efficient.

而且，你知道，我的意思是，Eric 说当你构建这些结合硬件和软件的复杂 AI 和机器人系统时，你真的会体会到“需求通常有多愚蠢”这个深刻而近乎信仰般的真理。

And, you know, too, I mean, Eric's saying that it really makes you realize when you build these like complex AI and robotic systems that combine hardware and software, you really appreciate like the deep religious truth of how dumb requirements usually are.

嗯。

Mhm.

质疑每一个需求，这是 Elon 算法中他们经常在 SpaceX 提到的第一条。质疑每一个需求，这是如此深刻而真实的真理。你必须让每个团队都质疑每一个需求。需求总是愚蠢的。当你……你会说，好吧，你应该去这个团队，那个团队。你经常需要深挖两层才能意识到……但质疑每一个需求是解决这些问题的根本部分。然后，另一件事是删除部件。飞机上最可靠的部件是根本不在飞机上的那个部件，因为你在上次设计中删掉了它。那个部件永远不会失效。而且，你知道，你从 Raptor 1、Raptor 2、Raptor 3 的对比中汲取了很多灵感。我相信你见过那些并排的发动机。实际上，现在很多来工厂的人都能看到 EV3 飞机。你可以看到 EV2 飞机、EV1 飞机，还有我们在 Zipline 技术第一版上构建的 10 个不同的硬件版本。你就是删、删、删。你知道，删除东西真的很难。这是一种勇气的行为。没人想删除东西。如果你删了东西，然后系统无法执行或无法工作，你会看起来很傻，但是，你知道，对系统物理特性和性能的真正信心使你能够开始删除东西。这是完全集成、全栈集成控制所有这些系统的一大优势。它使质疑每一个需求成为可能。它使删除部件成为可能。

Question every requirement, which is, you know, the number one part of like Elon's algorithm they talk about at SpaceX. Like question every requirement is like is so profoundly and deeply true. You must have every team question every requirement. The requirement is always stupid. When you and you're like, well, you know, it's supposed that you go to this team, that team. You like often you have to dig like two levels deep to realize like this is but questioning every requirement is a fundamental part of like getting through this. And then, you know, the other thing is delete the part. The most reliable part on an aircraft is the part that is not on the aircraft at all because you deleted it in the last design. That part will never fail. And you know, you take a lot of inspiration from looking at like the Raptor 1, Raptor 2, Raptor 3. I'm sure you've seen you know, those engines next to each other. Actually, a lot of people who come to the factory now and get to see like the EV3 aircraft. You can see the EV2 aircraft, the EV1 aircraft, plus like the 10 different hardware versions that we built on the initial on the first version of Zipline's technology. Um you would just delete, delete, delete. Like, you know, there's a huge amount of it's really hard to delete things. It's an act of courage. No one wants to delete the thing. You look like an idiot if you delete the thing and then like the system can't perform or doesn't work because you deleted the thing, but like, you know, true confidence in like the physics and the performance of the system enables you to start deleting things. It's a big advantage of having like full integrated full stack integrated control of all of these systems. It makes it possible to question every requirement. It makes it possible to delete parts.

是的，我认为第一性原理思维是其中的重要部分。我记得 Platform One 飞机，早期它有一个可展开的尾钩，因为它是这样降落的。它有一个大约一米长的大钩子，会从飞机上放下来，然后有一根线会抓住它并让飞机减速。这是一种复杂的装置。我们当时有个想法，我们应该能够把这种复杂性转移到地面系统，让回收系统、着陆系统更像航空母舰那样，抓住飞机，对吧？我们可以把驱动装置放在一个基本上就是机器人上，它会升起来抓住飞机。我们想，天哪，那会让飞机简单得多、轻得多、可靠得多。但我们当时还没让它工作。而到了要建造下一代飞机的时候，我们想，那我们下周要造哪种？是带着一米长的尾钩造，还是删掉尾钩，在尾部装一个 2 厘米长的尾钩，然后赌我们能把这东西弄好？我们整个房间都说删掉它，对吧？我们就这样干。所以我们从第一性原理出发，认为它应该能行。我们可以让它工作。我们还没做到，但我们可以做到。接下来的几周，包括我自己在内，很多人熬了很多个深夜才把这东西弄好，果然，第一批飞机来了，我们抓住了它们并让它们着陆了。所以这需要很多勇气，但真正扎根于第一性原理思维，加上一个紧密整合的团队，这就是你做到的方式。

Yeah, I think first principles thinking is a huge part of that. I remember the platform one aircraft, early days it had a deployable tail hook because how it landed. It had this big hook, it's like a meter long, that would come down from the aircraft and make had a line that would catch that and slow the airplane down. It's this kind of complicated contraption. And we had this idea that we should be able to move that complexity to the ground systems and have the recovery system, the landing system, more like an aircraft carrier, like grab the airplane, right? We can we can you know, put the actuation on the basically a robot that goes up and grabs the airplane. And we're like, man, that's going to make the aircraft so much simpler, so much lighter, so much more reliable. Um we didn't have it working yet. And it was time to build that next generation of the aircraft and we're like, so do we build these next week? Do we build them with the meter long tail hook or do we delete the tail hook and put the 2 cm long tail hook on the back and bet that we can get this thing working. We got a room like delete it, right? Like let's do this thing. And so we're like from first principles it should work. We can make it work. We haven't done it yet, but we can do it. And the next couple weeks looked like myself included a lot of people pulling a lot of late nights getting that thing working and sure enough those first aircraft came and we caught them and landed them. So it's a lot of courage but that like really being grounded in first principles thinking with a tight integrated team is how you do that.

有没有一种未来的版本，你不是在运送救命的药物和芝士汉堡，而是在运送人类？

Is there a version of the future in which instead of delivering life-saving medicine and cheeseburgers you're delivering human beings?

哎呀。

Uh-oh.

还有那个控制成本的董事会成员。

And the board member that's control their costs.

我的意思是，你知道，安全、可靠、经过实战考验。我不知道。看起来……

I mean, you know, safe, reliable, battle tested. I don't know. Seems like...

看起来如果我们要把自己从街道的暴政中解放出来，这是一个相当不错的解决方案。

Seems like if we're going to liberate ourselves from the tyranny of streets it's a pretty decent solution.

天哪，我我我我想我同意你的看法。嗯，我想……

Gosh, I I I think I agree with you. Um I think that...

他会来找你，再要十亿美元。

He's going to come to you and ask for another billion dollars.

嗯，我想你知道，有几个想法。一个是我认为 Alfred 知道我在回答这个问题时是有所保留的，因为要明确的是，你知道，为地球构建一个新的基础设施层，能够像互联网传输信息一样高效地递送包裹，这将成为地球上最大的公司之一。这是一个巨大的机会，我们肯定想保持谦逊和偏执，意识到这将有多么困难。我们未来几年要按我们想要的方式扩张，所需的执行水平非常高。而且你知道，为了说明这一点，我描述过在不久的将来实现每天一百万次递送的目标。

Um I think you know, a couple thoughts. Like one is that I think Alfred knows I'm measured in the way I answer that question because to be clear like you know, building a new infrastructure layer for the planet that can deliver packages as efficiently as the internet moves information is going to be one of the biggest companies on earth. Like it's a huge opportunity and we definitely want to stay like humble and paranoid about how super hard that's going to be. The level of execution for us to scale the way we want to scale over the next couple years. And you know, to put into perspective I described this goal of getting to a million deliveries a day in the very near future.

过去几个月，我们有很多合作伙伴，每个都要求从 Zipline 购买每天一百万次配送的运力。所以我们的运营计划现在成了我们的销售单位。这是个相当疯狂的认识。它让我们——我们最初把整个工厂的规模定为每年建造 2 万架飞机。那大约是每天一百万次配送所需的数量。这一切都在被推翻。我们意识到市场要大得多。还有一件事，当你看那条我几个月前给你看过的、完全呈双曲线增长的总每日飞行量曲线时，过去 16 个月里，要保持在那个轨道上所需的各种系统的复杂程度是相当高的。

We now have many partners who are each asking to buy a million deliveries a day of capacity from Zipline in the last few months. And so our operating plan has now become our unit of sale. That's a pretty crazy realization. It's leading us—we had originally sized the entire factory to build 20,000 aircraft a year. That was about what was required for a million deliveries a day. All of this is kind of being thrown out. We're realizing the market is way bigger. And one thing, when you look at this totally hyperbolic curve that I think I showed you only a few months ago, of what our total daily flight volumes have done over the last 16 months, the level of complexity of all the different systems required to stay on that track is quite high.

是的。

Yeah.

但美国每年有 55 亿次即时配送是由人类完成的。而我们用的是 4000 磅的燃油车来做这件事。

But there are 5.5 billion instant deliveries being done by humans in the United States every year. And that's what we're using a 4,000-pound gas combustion vehicle for.

这就像……

It's like...

是的，半小时到一个小时。

Yeah, half an hour to an hour.

没错。把它叫做“即时”是很好的营销，但确实如此。

Exactly. It's good marketing that it's called instant, but yeah.

没错。而且 30 分钟、45 分钟、一个小时——有相当高比例的司机报告说他们在过去一个月里吃过自己送的一些食物，超过 50%。这类配送存在重大的安全隐患。但 55 亿次即时配送——我们意识到的是，当你看 Zipline 现在在达拉斯的大规模运营，而且我们将在未来 4 个月再推出 4 个都市区，只看达拉斯，如果你把我们在达拉斯观察到的 Zipline 客户的购买行为推广到美国其他地区，那将会有 550 亿次即时配送，而不是 50 亿。

Exactly. And 30 minutes, 45 minutes, an hour—a significant percentage of drivers report eating some of the food they've delivered in the last month, more than 50%. There are significant safety concerns associated with these kinds of delivery. But 5.5 billion instant deliveries—what we're realizing, when you look at Zipline now at massive scale in Dallas and we're launching four more metros in the next 4 months, when you just look at Dallas, if you were to extend the buying behavior we're observing from Zipline customers in Dallas to the rest of the United States, there would be 55 billion instant deliveries happening, not five.

哇。

Wow.

550 亿。

55 billion.

是的。市场扩张巨大。我觉得这类似于人们看待 Uber 在旧金山推出时的情况，他们说：“哦，即使 Uber 能占到旧金山出租车市场的 33%，那也只是一家 150 亿美元的公司。”显然他们忽略了 Uber 现在是出租车市场的 10 倍规模。如果你让某样东西更方便、更便宜、产品体验更好，人们就会消费更多。

Yeah. There's a huge market expansion. I think it's similar to how people looked at Uber when they were launching in San Francisco and they're like, 'Oh, even if Uber gets to be 33% of the taxi market in San Francisco, it's only going to be a $15 billion company.' And obviously what they missed is that Uber's now 10 times the size of the taxi market. If you make something more convenient and less expensive and a better product experience, people are going to consume a lot more of it.

我们清楚地看到客户行为是每天下单，而不是一个月几次。我是说，前几天我遇到一位老奶奶，她去年从 Zipline 订了 350 次。

We are clearly seeing customer behavior where customers order every day rather than a couple times a month. I mean, I met a grandma the other day who's ordered 350 times from Zipline in the last year.

她 80 岁了。

She's 80 years old.

太棒了。

Amazing.

实际上，养老院是 Zipline 的大需求中心。这很合理。而且有趣的是，老年人，也许被认为不擅长使用技术，但他们都在用 iPhone。他们可能是在刷手机，这也许不是好事，但他们非常习惯使用 Apple ID、Apple Pay 或 Face ID、Apple Pay，直接下单并让东西送到他们手上。

Actually, nursing homes are like big Zipline demand centers. It makes sense. And it's funny, old people, maybe being not capable of using technology, they're all living on their iPhones. They're probably doom scrolling, which is maybe not a good thing, but they are very comfortable using Apple ID, Apple Pay, or Face ID, Apple Pay, and just ordering and having it delivered directly to them.

所以美国肯定没有足够的人力来完成 550 亿次配送。

So there are definitely not enough humans in the United States to do 55 billion deliveries.

是的。

Yeah.

我们能够满足这种需求的唯一方式就是自动化系统，而且道路肯定不够。当你看大多数主要城市的交通时，你会想：“哦，我们能不能把路上的汽车数量翻倍，这样就能做更多配送？”这显然行不通。如果我们想要促进人类的成长和繁荣，我们实际上需要把汽车从道路上减少。所以我认为这种变化是不可避免的。

The only way we're going to be able to serve this kind of demand is with automated systems, and there's definitely not enough roads. And when you look at traffic in most of our major cities, you're like, 'Oh, can we just maybe double the number of cars on the road so that we can do way more deliveries?' It obviously doesn't work. We actually need to be taking cars off the roads if we want to enable human growth and flourishing. So I think this change is inevitable.

那么，你们现在每天执行多少次飞行？一个月会是多少？

So, how many flights are you doing a day now and how many will you do in a month?

Zipline 现在每天执行近 5000 次飞行，我们预计今年年底将达到每天约 3 万次飞行。我们的目标是尽可能快地达到每天一百万次飞行，我们预计在不久的将来就能实现。我们现在做的所有供应链、制造和产能决策，不仅是为了让我们达到每天一百万次配送，还要加速超越这个数字。

Zipline is now doing almost 5,000 flights a day, and we're anticipating exiting this year at about 30,000 flights a day. And our goal is to get to a million flights a day as fast as humanly possible, which we expect to achieve in the very near future. All of the supply chain, manufacturing, and capacity decisions we're making right now are designed not just to get us to a million deliveries a day, but also to accelerate past that.

在单位经济方面，有趣的是每当我们遇到硬件公司，你总是问他们：“你觉得这个系统要花多少钱？”他们总是说会花 X，然后你说：“好的，它会花 10X，只是让你知道。”当你建造它时，它会花 10X。

The things that are interesting to think about on the unit economics front is like whenever we meet hardware companies, you always talk to them about how much do you think the system is going to cost? And they're always like it's going to cost X, and you're like cool, it's going to cost 10X just so you know. When you build it, it's going to cost 10X.

这是你给创始人的建议。

That's your advice to founders.

这是我给创始人的建议。对于硬件公司，因为我努力做一个好的种子投资人，回馈社区，你总是遇到这些创始人，他们总是说会花这么多。我说：“好的，就假设它会花 10 倍那么多，那还可行吗？如果花 10 倍你会怎么做？”

That's my advice to founders. For hardware companies, because I try to be a good seed investor and pay it forward, you're always meeting these founders and they're always like it's going to cost this much. I'm like cool, just assume it's going to cost 10 times that, and does it work? And what would you do if it cost 10 times that?

我是根据经验说的。当我们在 2016 年推出我们的系统时，我们收费 30 美元一次配送，运送 80 到 100 英里的输血血液，那是成本相当的。所以我们签的合同就是这个价格，我们以为我们会推出一个每次配送成本约 30 美元的系统。你觉得我们推出时实际成本是多少？

And I'm speaking from experience. When we launched our system in 2016, we were charging $30 a delivery to deliver a blood transfusion over 80 to 100 miles, and that was cost comparable. So that's what we signed the contract for, and we thought we were going to launch a system that cost about $30 a delivery. How much do you think it cost when we launched?

300 美元。

$300.

是的，每次配送成本 300 美元，而 Alfred 出奇地冷静。我们说：“好吧，我们有工作要做了。”所以第二年我们把它降到 120，然后第三年降到 75，再下一年降到 40，然后降到 28，再降到 18。现在对于我们在美国以外运营的远程技术，成本是 12 美元。现在，今年夏天正在发生的是，这些系统的完全负担单位经济正在跌破使用汽车配送的成本。我认为这是一个很酷的时刻，但大多数人并没有真正意识到。它正在悄悄发生。你不会在《纽约时报》上读到这个，但我认为这件事会在未来一两个月内发生，它将对世界以及世界的面貌，甚至对大多数普通人如何生活产生重大影响，因为现在在物流中使用机器人比使用人类更具成本效益。这对环境来说是个好消息。对社区来说也是好消息，它们会变得更安静、更安全、交通更少、污染更少。

Yeah, it cost $300 a delivery, and Alfred was surprisingly chill about it. And we were like, all right, we got work to do. So the next year we got it to like 120, then the next year we got it to 75, then the next year we got it to 40, then we got it to 28, then we got it to 18. It's now 12 for the long-range technology that we operate outside the US. Right now, what's happening this summer is the fully burdened unit economics of these systems is just now in the process of falling below the cost of using cars to deliver things. And I think it's a cool moment that most people don't really realize. It's happening quietly. You're not reading about this in the New York Times or whatever, but I think this thing is happening in the next month or two that is going to have a big impact on the world and how the world looks and how most people, even normal people, live their lives, because it is now more cost effective to use a robot in logistics than it is to use a human. And that's really good news for the environment. It's really good news for neighborhoods that are going to get quieter and safer and have less traffic and less pollution.

这对客户来说真是好消息，因为你可以更快、更可靠地获得产品，而且价格更低。你知道，我们的客户很喜欢——显然这个系统有很多酷炫之处，你可以谈论，也能看到客户在利用这些优势，但“没有意外”是其中很重要的一点。这可能是排名第一的评价。我觉得客户喜欢不必感到内疚，能够拥有一个他们知道成本是多少的系统。

And it's really good news for customers because you can get things way faster and more reliably, and for less expensive. You know, our customers love—there are obviously so many cool things about the system that you can talk about and that you see customers taking advantage of, but no surprises is a big one. That's probably the number one comment. I think customers love not having to feel guilty and being able to just have a system that they know how much it's going to cost.

好的，感谢 Keller 和 Eric 来到我们节目。我以为你会说“比想象中花的时间更长”，而不是“成本高出 10 倍”。但不管怎样。

Well, thank you, Keller and Eric, for being here with us. I thought you were going to say it takes longer than you thought, not 10x more than it costs. But anyway.

是的。

Yeah.

这是个很好的结尾。

That's a great way to end.

确实也花了更长的时间。我的意思是，几年前 Sean 在红杉内部写的那份备忘录，我觉得非常深刻。我不知道他会不会公开发布，或者是否被允许，但我确实认为，可以这么说，红杉内部有一份备忘录对我影响很大，它谈到：A，为什么硬件公司将在未来几十年成为对人类进步最具影响力的公司之一；B，为什么让这些公司起步并为它们融资极其困难；C，投资者应该如何考虑资助这类公司。

It does also take a lot longer. I mean, I think the memo that Sean wrote here at Sequoia a few years ago is deeply true. I don't know if he'll ever publish that publicly or if it'll be allowed, but I do think, suffice it to say, there's an internal Sequoia memo that has had a big impact on me, talking about A, why hardware companies are going to be some of the most impactful companies for humanity's progress over the coming decades, and B, why it's super hard to get those companies off the ground and fundraise for them, and C, how investors should think about funding those kinds of companies.

看看当今世界，你会发现世界变化有多快，这很有趣。因为想想看，我们花了 10 年时间当那个该死的害群之马。硬件公司？不了，谢谢。让我们投资 SaaS，投资利润率。那是整个未来的所在，还有 iPhone 应用之类的。所以我不知道，我想我觉得……

It's interesting when you look at the world today to see how fast the world changes. Because think about it, we spent 10 years being the freaking black sheep. Hardware company? No, thank you. Let's invest in SaaS, let's invest in margins. That's where the whole future was, and iPhone apps, blah blah blah. So I don't know, I guess I feel like...

现在你们酷了。

Now you're cool.

贝恩。记得贝恩和蝙蝠侠吗？他说什么？就像，“你选择了黑暗。我生于黑暗。”天哪，我们在建造机器人公司成为酷事之前，已经做了 10 年机器人公司。但我确实认为，这对美国的竞争力，以及我们建设一个我们真正自豪地交给子孙后代的未来的能力，尤其重要。为了建设我们都被许诺的科幻版未来，我们必须重新擅长建造东西。我们不仅要擅长建造车辆和硬件，还要擅长建造基础设施。我们依赖着祖辈为我们建造的、正在崩塌的基础设施。前几天我读到，我们刚刚在金门大桥上安装了防自杀网。你们读过那个项目吗？安装那些网的成本比祖辈建造那座桥的成本还高。

Bane. Remember Bane and Batman? What does he say? Like, you adopted the darkness. I was born in it. Man, we built a robotics company for 10 years before building a robotics company was a cool thing to do. But I do think that especially important for US competitiveness and just for our ability to build the future that we'd be really proud to hand to our kids and to our grandkids, and to build the sci-fi version of the future that we were all promised, we got to get good at building stuff again. And we got to get good at building not just vehicles and hardware, we got to get good at building infrastructure. We're depending on the crumbling infrastructure that our grandparents built for us. I read the other day that we just installed these anti-suicide nets on the Golden Gate Bridge. Have you guys read about that project? It cost more to install those nets than it cost our grandparents to build that bridge.

我相信。

I believe it.

所以总之，我们非常兴奋。我们认为未来充满希望。我们应该能够建设基础设施。我们必须对此感兴趣，而且我认为人们必须有勇气去面对。我们必须重新学习如何制造和运营复杂的供应链。而且，如果我们要建设科幻版的未来，我们必须大胆，相信它们。

So anyway, we get really excited. We think the future is promising. We should be able to build infrastructure. We have to be interested in it, and I think people have to have the stomach for it. And we have to learn how to manufacture and run complex supply chains again. And we have to be bold and believe in sci-fi versions of the future if we're going to build them.

太棒了。我们就此结束。相信科幻的未来。

Awesome. Let's end it at that. Believe in the sci-fi future.

是的。

Yeah.

感谢你们来到我们节目。

Thank you guys for being with us.

谢谢。

Thank you.

感谢邀请我们。

Thanks for inviting us.