An Alphabet-owned Wing drone "incinerated itself" after it became entangled in power lines in Brisbane, Australia. On the bright side, the food stayed hot.
It’s always nice when delivery food stays hot all the way to your door, but one drone in Australia may have taken it too far. An unmanned delivery vehicle, operated by Wing—a subsidiary of Alphabet (parent of Google), landed on power lines in Brisbane and fried itself with 11,000 volts of electricity. As a result more than 2,000 homes and businesses briefly went dark on Thursday, according to reports from The Age and ABC News Australia.
Danny Donald, a spokesperson from utility provider Energex, described the incident as a “first” for the land down under to ABC. The company managed to restore power to 2,000 customers within about 45 minutes, but the electricity remained out for 300 others for three hours.
“We didn’t actually have to get the drone off, as such, it actually caught fire and incinerated itself,” Donald reportedly told The Age. The drone fell to the ground, where utility workers found it. “The meal was still hot inside the drone’s delivery box when the crew got there,” he added to ABC.