Amazon generally doesn't do single item delivery for perishable groceries though, Fresh has a $100 minimum to avoid fees, for example.
Non-perishables are fine on a single-unit purchase because again, they're not just going to your house, they're going to dozens in your area every single day.
I know where you're coming from, but there's a reason this whole model exists, and it's not because it costs more.
I'm surprised you don't know any inefficient people! I know many. A friend drives 15 minutes out of the way because that grocery store is a little less crowded (they're the same chain). They've probably been doing it for a decade.
> that F150 going 5 extra miles is more efficient than a Prius driving 25 miles from a Costco to their home.
but that's not what's happening, Amazon isn't driving a Prius to your individual home then back to the warehouse... it's driving to a hundred people on an algorithmically optimized route. They do this because efficiency at scale makes them more profit.
Individual people make inefficient preferential decisions all the time, because the incentive to measure and improve these things is too low to bother on an individual scale.
this isn't even close to true and falls apart in a number of ways, the most popular vehicle in america right now (F-series truck) is woefully inefficient for just about everything
there are people who regularly go out of their way to drive to their favorite store for like 1-2 special items, people bring their dogs along on trips for companionship and leave them sitting in an air conditioned idling car while they shop
individuals are irrationally inefficient in dozens of ways that large businesses root out, for better or worse
> I suspect delivery of single items cuts back significantly on trips to the store.
Amazon is also specifically incentivized to be efficient at scale, it impacts their bottom line to the point where they care about the shape of their vehicles. Individuals don't operate on the same scale so these sort of micro-optimizations don't happen.
Occasionally posts like this do get the attention of the company responsible, more than an email does... but indeed that's like a one in a million situation
I'm not saying it's better, just pointing out that it's a problem capitalizing on another problem and there's no real virtue here... only advertising, let's stop getting tricked by advertising