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There are a number of potential issues they solve: 1) Efficiency. A flying car can theoretically take a straight line to its destination instead of having to
by adwf 10y ago
There are a number of potential issues they solve:
1) Efficiency. A flying car can theoretically take a straight line to its destination instead of having to follow a complex road layout. It might be less efficient to fly per minute, but if you're flying less minutes, it could be a net gain.
2) Reduce congestion. How much fuel in a car is burnt in traffic? With flying cars, congestion will largely be a thing of the past, you have effectively unlimited road just by changing altitude.
3) Reduce urban sprawl. You can get rid of a lot of the roads that plaster the countryside. There will still need to be some obviously. But less.
4) Reduce national infrastructure costs. As above, you get rid of the roads, you don't need to maintain them anymore.
5) Convenience. You don't need a driveway or garage on your house when you can land on the roof ;)
All in all there are quite a few decent reasons for it. Just depends on whether you can beat that efficiency level.
It would be interesting to see if anyone has done calculations factoring in the cost savings from reducing sprawl and the miles of road that are maintained each year.
- dekhn 10y agoThe efficiency argument doesn't work: moving up against gravity will always be more expensive.
- jonnycowboy 10y agoThere are always tradeoffs... airplanes move more or less at a steady speed, and are much more aerodynamic than cars, which spent quite a bit of time stuck in traffic. Thus in many cases planes are more efficient than cars (despite needing to lift).
- dekhn 10y agoAirplanes have to go faster than the stall speed. Stall speed is typically ~60mph or more, and air resistance goes up as the square of the speed (times the aerodynamc cross section). Airplanes aren't really that much more aerodynamic than modern cars.
- adwf 10y agoNot necessarily. If a car is twice as efficient, but has to travel three times as far because of the windy road system, the flying car will have it beat in a straight line.
- knodi123 10y ago> travel three times as far because of the windy road system, Ironic choice of words. The winding road system adds distance to your commute, but a windy airspace adds air-miles to your commute. That is, a flying car doesn't travel through the same amount of air when going 1 ground mile in different directions.
- adwf 10y agoHaha, completely unintentional. Very good point though. Personally I don't think flying cars will take off (ha, done it again...) for quite some time, if only for risk reasons. Think about just how many car accidents there are every day, now imagine every accident ending with a 100m death plunge from the sky. I just can't see it going mainstream for a long time.
- dekhn 10y agoI think you'll need to adjust that from "three times", to "90 times" for the physics and math to work.
- daveguy 10y ago> 1) Efficiency. I expect it will always be more efficient to roll an object on wheels than to keep an object lifted under power and moving forward at the same time. Rolling friction is not very high. This and safety are major reasons we don't have flying cars today. Prop planes are in the sub 20 mpg range and jets are in the gallons per mile. >2) Reduce congestion I think that autonomous cars (on the ground) will solve this a lot faster than flying cars. > 3) Reduce urban sprawl. This is just incorrect. The roads are not what causes urban sprawl and the roads are not the only negative impact. Urban sprawl happened for two reasons: "white flight" and easy transportation. This does nothing for one and makes the other easier. > 4) Reduce national infrastructure costs. This would be a very long term benefit after ubiquity of flying cars:cars as cars:trains now. I don't think it will ever get there because of point 1). Personal flight consumes more energy than personal rolling. >5) convenience. True. Although houses would have to have heli landing pads installed making it more of a rich toy item. Not to mention noise. Also, autonomous rolling vehicles will solve this too. Is going to your roof more convenient than going to your driveway?
- adwf 10y agoYou have to take into account more than just the pure physical efficiency of rolling cars vs. flying. There is the practical efficiency too. When I drive my car to work, I have to take a big dogleg out to the motorway, sit in traffic for 5 minutes to join, then drive down the motorway which is winding between the towns but mostly going the right direction, then take another big dogleg off + traffic, and finally I'm at my destination. I wouldn't be surprised if I'd driven the equivalent of 2-3 times the straight line distance. Normal efficiency calcs focus on the gallons part, a flying car would reduce the miles.
- outworlder 10y ago> 1) Efficiency. A flying car can theoretically take a straight line to its destination instead of having to follow a complex road layout. It might be less efficient to fly per minute, but if you're flying less minutes, it could be a net gain. Theoretically. That fact that standard commercial flights don't do that should be a red flag. Commercial flights follow pre-designated airways. Smaller aircraft in unregulated airspace aren't that constrained. But that's because there's too few of them.