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Larry Page is pouring millions into flying cars
- bryanrasmussen 10y agohuh, it looks like he might be under the mistaken impression that he's actually pouring it into small airplanes, as was I after reading the article.
- marcosdumay 10y agoA self-piloting VTOL small airplane is about the nearest thing we will get from a flying car in a long while.
- bryanrasmussen 10y agosure, in the same way the pancakes I am going to make for breakfast is the closest thing I am going to have to waffles today but if someone is going to ask me what I had for breakfast I won't tell them 'waffles'.
- seunosewa 10y agoWhy would the VTOL miniplanes described in the article be better than small helicopters, which take off the same way?
- mhmiles 10y agoI’d guess speed and prop redundancy
- jpeg_hero 10y agoaerodynamic stability to glide down to emergency landing area should problem arise. more power efficient in cruise flight.
- woofyman 10y agoHelicopters can land without power (autorotate) or if the tail rotator fails. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autorotation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autorotation
- SamReidHughes 10y agoHelicopters are actually safer (than some set of airplanes that might include a bunch of recreational planes), because if something breaks, it's easier to find a place to land.
- jpeg_hero 10y agoYeah, I know a helicopter pilot, I was shocked when he told me that. Would love to hear a aviation enthusiast compare safety differences and failure modes between helicopter autorotation and plane glide...
- ohyoutravel 10y agoI am not a pilot, but have talked extensively with them and we have some planes in the family. MUCH better to autorotate land a helicopter than to glide land a plane, for a myriad of reasons. Autorotating heli landings result in a bit of a rougher bump upon landing, but otherwise are no big deal. Crash landing a plane is obviously different and results in destroying the aircraft and, likely, people inside.
- nether 10y agoYeah, I was an aerospace engineer at a helicopter company for eight years. They practiced autorotation landings (full engine shut off) every day, outside my office. They were non-events.
- xb95 10y agoI respectfully disagree with the other comment who said he'd rather take a helicopter. (I'm a private pilot of fixed-wing aircraft.) For General Aviation safety, read the Joseph T. Nall report: https://www.aopa.org/-/media/files/aopa/home/training-and-safety/nall-report/25thnallreport.pdf https://www.aopa.org/-/media/files/aopa/home/training-and-sa... To summarize, helicopters and airplanes enjoy a reasonably similar lethality. Approximately 15-20% of accidents (total) are fatal to one or more occupants. However, if you break it down to fatal-accidents-per-100,000-hours then helicopters are worse (1.5 vs 1.0) at least in 2013. When it comes to general aviation safety, however, the far and away most important factor is the pilot. Unless you get damned unlucky, the vast majority of accidents are either avoidable or survivable if the pilot doesn't do something wrong. In helicopters, a controlled autorotation will be survivable most of the time. In airplanes, a controlled forced landing is the same. Of course, you can have your cake and eat it too -- I recently purchased a Cirrus SR22-TN (airplane) which has a Ballistic Recovery System aka a parachute. If anything goes wrong you can pull the chute and the entire airplane will descend to the ground. :-)
- _ph_ 10y agoPlanes are way more energy efficient in normal forward flight. And electric multicopters, like the popular camera drones, you don't need much of the mechanics of a traditional helicopter.
- tehlike 10y agoenergy efficiency.
- tehlike 10y agohttp://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/5191/how-does-the-efficiency-of-a-fixed-wing-compare-to-a-rotary-wing http://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/5191/how-does-th...
- ChuckMcM 10y agoPilot training time. At the Hiller Museum in San Mateo one of the docents was talking about how helicopters seem so great but they are so hard to fly with the pilot managing rotor pitch, rotor speed, and countering torque with the tail rotor. A typical quad/hexa/octo copter type vehicle is much easier to fly. (as is a gyrocopter but it cannot really take off vertically)
- foldr 10y ago>A typical quad/hexa/octo copter type vehicle is much easier to fly They're easier to fly because they have software providing artificial stability. If you had to control each rotor individually it would be virtually impossible. There's no reason in principle why a helicopter couldn't have similarly straightforward controls.
- Pyxl101 10y agoYes, I've wondered that. Why not provide a joystick for translation motion, rudder pedals for rotation, and a lever for ascending and descending? Allow the human to provide simple inputs, like: tilt the stick forward to go forward. No other inputs required. Aircraft will remain at the same altitude while it tilts forward and gains airspeed. The computer consumes all of these controls, understands what the human wants to do, and then makes the necessary low-level adjustments. I suppose one obstacle to this plan is that the helicopter would need to be entirely fly-by-wire, and there would be no fallback to manual control. This would likely make the helicopter more complex and expensive.
- ridgeguy 10y agoHelicopters do have sophisticated automatic flight control systems. A brief blurb describing some aspects: http://www.helicoptermaintenancemagazine.com/article/understanding-helicopter-automatic-flight-control-systems-afcs http://www.helicoptermaintenancemagazine.com/article/underst...
- shmerl 10y agoWell, let him not stop pouring millions into Google Fiber.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Animats 10y agoHow's the Ehang 184 coming along?[1] That's an electric flying car, essentially a big 8-prop drone, announced last June. They're targeting short-distance travel within big, crowded cities in China. China's 1% will be able to get across Beijing in 10 minutes. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs4nDFgVx2o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs4nDFgVx2o
- JumpCrisscross 10y agoFirst comment makes a good observation. When a plane loses power, it glides. When a helicopter loses power, it autorotates [1]. If a single engine on a quadcopter loses power, it crashes [2]. There is work being done on mitigating this, but I don't see why you'd go for a quad versus tri- or helicopter. (Quadcopters are better than other aerial platforms at one thing: maneuverability. To get this agility they sacrifice speed, efficiency and payload weight.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autorotation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autorotation [2] https://www.quora.com/Can-a-quadcopter-fly-without-one-rotor https://www.quora.com/Can-a-quadcopter-fly-without-one-rotor
- avar 10y agoThe Ehang 184 has 8 propellers, two for each of the four quad points. I'd assume the reason is safety, that it can limp to the ground with just 7. You're wrong about a quadcopter not being able to fly with 3 rotors, see this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsHryqnvyYA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsHryqnvyYA That looks like it would be quite a ride with a human on-board, but would probably suck less than crashing.
- woofyman 10y agoThat's fine as long as all 8 have independent batteries and flight controllers.
- ambrop7 10y ago> If a single engine on a quadcopter loses power, it crashes If one motor fails, the quadcopter could turn off the opposite motor and reverse the direction of one of the remaining motors, so that it is left with two opposing motors spinning in opposite direction. The torque of two motors might be enough to keep it flying. Some steering would be possible with the assistance of the third working motor which could spin in either direction as needed.
- ygmelnikova 10y agoAdds a whole new dynamic to the term 'fender bender'.
- wernercd 10y agoFor the love of God, make something affordable (50's? 60's?) and I'd buy one in a snap... my daily commute is PITA and sore nead of drone'ification.
- pmcollins 10y agoI think you mean soar need. :-)
- drum 10y agoInteresting title considering the article's as much about Uber and battery efficiency a la Tesla as it is Larry Page. I'm still curious about how highways for these types of aircraft will be implemented. I imagine the goal is ubiquity and at some point, with thousands of these things flying around, flight paths will be the bottleneck.
- dignan 10y agoProbably the same way they are for planes- victor airways. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_airways https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_airways
- chaostheory 10y agocould be VTOL http://moller.com/ http://moller.com/ - this project seems dead =( hopefully either I'm wrong or something more interesting takes its place
- BoringCode 10y agoIt's not just dead, they've yet to perform untethered flight on any of their prototypes. The Terrafugia Transition is an example of a far more practical form of "flying car"
- mentos 10y agoI was thinking of a quadcopter taxi design that could be designed to protect the passenger in the event they fell from many stories. Something that would suspend the single rider's seat in the center of the cockpit from cables attached to the shell. Whatever the best design for the classic 'egg drop' test would probably be a good start. If you could guarantee survival from terminal velocity I think a drone taxi could become a viable mode of transport.
- eip 10y agoThe success of SillyCon Valley has mostly been from companies with close ties to the government that commercialize black and gray ops technology. We can only hope that the next two technologies scheduled for public availability are permanent batteries and antigravity.
- frevd 10y agoWhy only 4, 8 or 12 rotors? Can a group of much smaller rotors replace the thrust a single bigger one produces? Would add a lot more redundancy and limit the costs.
- bobsil1 10y agoYes. You can sum rotor areas to add up to same as one big rotor.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- imgabe 10y agoI hope they fly themselves as well. Humans can barely manage to safely pilot a car in 2 dimensions. I don't want to think of the carnage that would result if we took existing traffic and moved it 10,000 feet up in the air. Every fender bender would become a multiple fatality.
- tachyonbeam 10y agoI think everyone working on this is well-aware of this problem. It's obvious that there can't be widespread adoption without self-piloting technology. The danger to passengers and people on the ground is much too great, and the burden of getting a pilot license is also too much of an obstacle for most people. There are other considerations such as requirements for frequent routine inspections on flying vehicles, which many people couldn't be trusted to fulfill, which also suggest that a self-driving-uber kind of model is really the right solution. Shameless plug: my blog post from last year on this topic: https://pointersgonewild.com/2015/09/15/all-hope-is-not-lost-for-flying-cars/ https://pointersgonewild.com/2015/09/15/all-hope-is-not-lost...
- detritus 10y agoSurely it would be simpler than dealing with the complexity current '2d' autonomous car systems face? As long as you have designated drop zones, everything else becomes mathematically simpler.
- antiquark 10y agoBut their entire path would require a drop zone. So in effect, there would be these long strips on the ground mirroring the flight paths of these flying cars. You might even run out of space on the ground for drop zones.
- jonshariat 10y agoWith the type of aircraft in the article, they could come down like helicopters do, right?
- kken 10y agoBecause he can. That's the only answer.
- phkahler 10y agoForget electric. That's just a gimmick that allows these companies to say "in five to ten years because batteries." Prove it. Make a gas powered one to prove your concept. The simplest flying machine is probably an autogyro. Automate that for point to point transport, show the automation, redundancy, and safety for urban use. Solve those real issues and then we can talk about fancy designs.
- NegativeLatency 10y agoHow is an autogyro simpler than a fixed wing aircraft? The both have a motor, and on one of them the wings have to move.
- greesil 10y agoLower stall speed
- phkahler 10y ago>> How is an autogyro simpler than a fixed wing aircraft? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhZJgOA-hyI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhZJgOA-hyI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohGAQfseJzM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohGAQfseJzM Sure looks simpler. You also get short field takeoff and vertical landing. How about a roadable one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CajAq6ndJYE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CajAq6ndJYE
- marcosdumay 10y agoFrom the article: "This kind of design wouldn’t work with conventional aircraft engines because 10 engines would be way too heavy. But electric motors can be made extremely small and light, allowing even a car-size vehicle to have 10 of them."
- dispose13432 10y agoBut batteries are a significant source of weight.
- danbruc 10y agoDo we actually want flying cars? They are probably less efficient because you have to overcome gravity, they are probably going to be pretty noisy, falling out of the sky and smashing into the ground is a new failure mode, ... Flying cars are certainly a nice gadget, but do we really need or want them? I can only think of two good arguments for flying cars, entering the third dimension if we run out of space on the surface and maybe being able to get rid of our current infrastructure, i.e. no longer having to build and maintain roads and railroad tracks and the accompanying infrastructure. In metropolitan areas it certainly looks a bit like we are running out of space on the surface but I am actually not sure that we are not just pretty bad at making use of the available space. No longer having to maintain a large piece of infrastructure seems actually the more convincing argument to me.
- CptJamesCook 10y agoRich people want them. What society wants (needs) is a superior airport experience and more fuel efficient air travel.
- paublyrne 10y agoI'd prioritise high speed rail over more efficient air travel. But rail is not always feasible.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jonshariat 10y agoIts not going to be flying cars as in a replacement of cars, not for a long time. What is needed is short "hops" in crowded areas. San Jose -> SF is the example in the article that Uber gave.
- loeg 10y agoYeah, I don't know either. Maybe don't think of them as flying cars, but instead as cheap helicopters on-demand.
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- nrjdhsbsid 10y agoI did a bit of sleuthing on this project a while ago. Based on what I could find, here's what they're working at: VTOL plane with 8ish electric fans Hybrid gas/electric Rotary engine in back for charging batteries and longer flights.
- nrjdhsbsid 10y agoI did a bit of sleuthing on this project a while ago. Based on what I could find, here's what they're working at: VTOL plane with 8ish electric fans Hybrid gas/electric Rotary engine in back for charging batteries and longer flights.
- nrjdhsbsid 10y agoI did a bit of sleuthing on this project a while ago. Based on what I could find, here's what they're working at: VTOL plane with 8ish electric fans Hybrid gas/electric Rotary engine in back for charging batteries and longer flights.
- nrjdhsbsid 10y agoI did a bit of sleuthing on this project a while ago. Based on what I could find, here's what they're working at: VTOL plane with 8ish electric fans Hybrid gas/electric Rotary engine in back for charging batteries and longer flights.
- overcast 10y agoI'm saying it now. Flying cars for the general population is just not going to happen until the repulsor lift is invented, and ubiquitous with all aircraft. Many, many years into the future. Long after those of us on HN are gone. There is just zero need for this right now, and is just silly nonsense. Work on making our ground systems 100% safe, efficient, and reliable first.
- Spooky23 10y agoWhy not? With self driving, it makes a hell of a lot more sense than autonomous cars. Any point in a 30 mile typical travel radius is a <15 minute flight.
- loeg 10y agoCost and safety.
- dforrestwilson1 10y ago^ This. Think about the capacity constraints during your typical commute. All those times you have ever been held up in traffic could be massively diminished thanks to increase short-hop flight commutes.
- dispose13432 10y agoWhy do you think the airspace won't have traffic? You want to end traffic with modern accessible tech? Build ten layer freeways.
- Spooky23 10y agoAs New York City first discovered when the Triborough Bridge was built, more highway capacity generates more traffic. Today only the Uber-rich can afford short haul flying. With a airtaxi/flying car scenario, just about anyone could fly across their metro area for some special occasion.
- wongarsu 10y ago
- techrich 10y agoThis could turn into a Clive Sinclair obsession with his car!
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- privacypooch 10y agoDon't feed the google!
- jedberg 10y agoLarry loves flying cars. I was visiting Google I want to say at least five years ago, and on that day they happen to have a "flying car showcase". Larry had invited companies with flying car prototypes to showcase their items, and they were for sale (for about $300K - $500K, well within the affordability range of the pre-IPO folks). They were basically just cars with foldable wings, so they were more like cars that could turn into small planes.
- dboreham 10y agoOn the plus side: flying cars actually exist while self-driving ones do not.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- dsr_ 10y agoIngredients: One flying car, capable of moving 4 x 100 kg (passengers and baggage). One self-piloting feature, allowing (or mandating) autonomous movement to the destination. One timing device and detonator. 400Kg of whatever kind of explosives you can get. Behold: Uber's cruise missile. Come to think of it, you can probably load up a lot more payload for less money in a ground vehicle.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- nickgrosvenor 10y agoDo they ever successfully do anything with the things they develop? Or just buy successful companies? They're wacky moonshot ideas sorta ring of the boy who cried wolf at this point. they never live up to the hype.
- gondo 10y agoAeroMobil already has working prototype
- kafkaesq 10y agoSo he can fly over, and get a closer look at, people living in RVs on the street just a few miles from where his employees eat free steak and sushi every day. Like the Chavez family, for example: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/dec/28/silicon-valley-homeless-east-palo-alto-california-schools https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/dec/28/silicon-vall...
- pmarreck 10y agoAnyone else remember the Moller 400? And the issue of Popular Mechanics that was devoted to it?
- MrJagil 10y agoI'm curious if more propellers add redundancy in emergencies or if the added number of failure points will show not to be worth it.
- vit05 10y agoAutonomous air is way easier than autonomous ground.
- zombees 10y agoSo why the desire to have a VTOL car right now? The capability to do affordable commuter air is almost in reach and we already have aircraft in the certification pipeline that can fly 2 people on electricity alone for about an hour (see Pipistrel Alpha Electro and Airbus E-Fan). VTOL is something we've been working on for decades and still have issues with reliability (MV-22/F-35 anyone?) but airplanes are inherently stable and incredibly simple once you have a power plant that doesn't suck. If you want to know why GA has been lagging so hard, just about every plane you see has a $30k, 10gph, 258lb, lead guzzling O-360 in it that dates back from the 1930s. And yes, we still use leaded gas (100LL).
- jmcgough 10y agoA lot of the critical comments I see here are addressed the Uber paper (https://www.uber.com/elevate.pdf https://www.uber.com/elevate.pdf) which is a really interesting read. The cusp of their argument is that several technologies are coming together to make VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) feasible within the next decade. VTOL aircrafts are theoretically much more energy efficient than helicopters, and a lot of the cost associated with planes is due to their low production volume. If a company like Uber started to use VTOL aircrafts, the price would rapidly decline to closer to what cars cost now, and the cost of a flight would be low enough that more than just the wealthy could use them.
- justicezyx 10y agoI hope it's not Uber pioneer this movement. Uber showed that they are not willing to comply public agency on regulation-related restrictions. VTOL vehicles, they are more dangerous than cars. Uber's attitude, when handling such technologies, make me scared.
- johngalt 10y agoThe FAA is an entirely different animal than municipal codes backing taxis. Uber's 'easier to get forgiveness than permission' model will not fly with the FAA.
- numbchuckskills 10y agoLarry Page pouring millions is like you donating 50 bucks.
- aurizon 10y agoTranslation:- Larry Page is spending millions of his personal wealth - which he is entitled to do - into a development quest to develop personal dual-use road/aircraft. This will never become economic, although is has been shown many times to be doable, with numerous products developed. None survived the economic screen, let alone the FAA screen. Let us see why:- Ever see a traffic jam? lines of 1000's of cars stopped or going slowly in a wave pattern. - Yes - we see them all the time. Can you see, in your mind's eye an aerial traffic jam, with 1000's of airplanes halted in mid air for a clear path? No. We have never seen them, and we never will, until we invent sky=hooks to hang them on, or a workable anti-gravity system(which may well be impossible). That said, the planes will have to keep moving a little above stall speed. Can you imagine the air traffic control nightmare of these 1000's of carplanes? So these are enough to defeat the mass aspect. They may well be viable in Australia, our back with large vistas of flat land and little weather on which 10,000 or more landing strips can be built. Well, we have that now in Australia, but we use airplanes to go from place to place over longer distances and we use cars/trucks for local use. ALl this said, Larry will make his plane, he may sell a few to the idle rich, but they will never become commonplace.
- kefka 10y agoI get smatterings of your comments of the similar old idea of "Can you imagine a mechanical horse carriage where all 4 hooves moved in unison?! Balderdash, I must say. There's no way 4 legs could ever move that fast and that synchronized! It'll never happen. Now, Jeeves, go ready my carriage. We're going to meet a weird entrepreneur by the name of Henry Ford." You're right. With old "state of the art", and yes I do say old, having 100+ planes in a square mile would be very trying. But we're talking of no encryption, no authentication, no anti-jamming, no anything really. And that's from a 2012 presentation at Defcon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXv1j3GbgLk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXv1j3GbgLk
- aurizon 10y agoWell, cars came into being at first as steam driven, but the weight was high and there were no hard roads, so they got along on tracks = rail road. Later smaller gasoline driven machines came along (first Benz) and it advanced because it freed us from costly, maintenance intensive, food intensive and crap/pee intensive horses. Before cars many large city street were 2-3 feet deep in horse shit. As for control, huge latency issues would hinder large amounts of traffic.
- crispytx 10y agoThese companies are trying to produce something that already exists: The Ultralight Aircraft. Ultralights are cheap, require little training, and no licensing to operate. HOWEVER, they're @#$%ing slow, and aren't practical as a means of transportation because you can get places faster in car.
- disposablezero 10y agoThese will only be toys, and here's why: fuel efficiency (or lack thereof) per passenger. Good luck getting over 2 MPG considering having to haul around bits to meet both road and aircraft regs, fuel and passenger. Plus, do we really want to rehash the already decidedly terrible prospects of making average distracted/intoxicated/uncoordinated people into pilots? Give up lusting over Peter Thiel's science fiction pipedreams and move onto solving real problems like breaking dependence on fossil fuels or sequestering greenhouse gases.
- evolve2k 10y ago"German says battery technology isn’t quite there yet. He predicts the energy density of batteries will need to approximately double for small electric airplanes to really take off."
- xbmcuser 10y agoThe next step from automated selfdriving cars could be flying cars. I wouldn't trust a million idiots flying but if it's AI it would probably be safer.1
- nojvek 10y agoWhy does it need to be an entire car. I just want a drone I can hook a seat into with a range of 10-20 miles. Is that impossible? Lifting 200 pounds for 20 miles is probably doable with current technology right?
- sargun 10y agoI'm curious, why hasn't anyone worked with ground effect vehicles (things like wing-in-plane) in an urban setting. It seems like commuting from South SF <-> Mountain View would be greatly smoothed by introducing GEVs without a ridiculous cost.
- sidcool 10y agoWe drive in two dimensions, it's about time we explored the third one.
- maverick_iceman 10y agoWhy can't we use small helicopters as flying cars? Is it because economics make the idea infeasible? If that's so then why the current ideas will be better?
- kalleboo 10y agoI've been wondering something similar - why is it that we have all these GPS-controlled self-flying stabilized quadcopters using cheap chinese microcontrollers, but a lack of mini-helicopters using the same technology. Is it that much more difficult to computer-control? Or are the more complicated mechanics just "not worth it" when you can just build a quadcopter instead?
- ilaksh 10y agoI believe that something like a self-guided human-size quadcopter is safer than a helicopter and that will start to take up some of the luxury helicopter transport market. People seem to be arguing that helicopters are safer. I'm not an aerodynamics expert, but my intuition tells me that will be proven wrong eventually. They just are misjudging a newish way of doing things. Anyway, I don't see any point in arguing about it. Eventually the drones will get bigger and bigger and someone will have the balls to allow it to be tested properly. And eventually people will catch on.
- baybal2 10y ago>flying cars Is Larry going to be the first billionaire mental asylim patient?
- codecamper 10y agoLarry Page receives millions every week through automatic sales of his Google stock. I'd guess this project is for impressing his buddy Richard Branson and any other star he'd like to hang out with.
- mannykannot 10y agoThe hardest problem is going to be noise, and electric propulsion is not the solution. Rotating blades are very effective noise generators, and the only alternative we have to rotating blades in some form or other are rockets.
- upofadown 10y agoThe "lots of small propellers" VTOL approach for all practical purposes needs an large area of land anyway. There is no way any neighbours would tolerate the epic levels of noise such a scheme produces.