I see three realistic models for drone delivery at scale (plus there's probably quite a number of quite niche ones), with widespread flight operations likely to happen in this order:
- Preset route, point-to-point links. Think blood deliveries between hospitals, supply runs to isolated stores, and the like, or from shore-based launch points to island communities. These will probably include some quite long range routes, and may therefore need quite large drones. There are already plenty of these under trial, and even in commercial operation around the developed world, but currently they are over quite rural routes, or even open water.
- Rural "Last mile" deliveries. Instead of driving up every farm track, the delivery van can park up at a convenient point and launch several drones to each of the addresses within a few miles concurrently. Batteries can be replaced or charges between launch sites. These will probably use quite small, e.g. DJI Inspire sized, drones. This would also include things like emergeny medicatation deliveries to locations that are cut off. I've read about some interesting trials that don't seem far off realisation, but nothing I'm aware of working at scale and in actual "production" use yet.
- "Delivery cost no object, must have it now!" mail order deliveries. Early adopters can expect to pay a stiff premium for their packages and, despite what Amazon and the like claim, I think we're still a long way off seeing this being a reality except (maybe) in some very niche and affluent areas surrounding disribution centres. It's not like there's a lot of products that people are going to need with sufficient urgency that traditional rapid delivery options can't do it and it's worth them paying through the nose over the top of that for the priviledge of having it a few hours quicker.
All three obviously require a BVLOS waiver, plenty of which have been granted and, where applicable, include at least some relaxation of flight rules for passing over people and structures. The conditions of that waiver include a lot of safety mitigation for potential losses of control and other mishaps though, and those push the price of operation way up. It's a expensive technical bar to entry, and that's going to nix a lot of business models from achieving viablility, no matter how much clever tech like RemoteID, ATC integration, GNSS navigation, and collision avoidance you have onboard.