10 ms·

This strikes me as pretty pathetic effort by Uber to make itself appear forward looking Flying is not a valid commute solution and never will be because of phy

by iaw 10y ago

This strikes me as pretty pathetic effort by Uber to make itself appear forward looking Flying is not a valid commute solution and never will be because of physics. All things equal, the energy requirements to change elevation will be too great to justify adoption. The system only becomes useful/safe if you "stack" vehicles on roadways. What happens when one has a failure and crashes? This is either market signaling or another thing Uber will bleed money onto.

jessriedel 10y ago
> Flying is not a valid commute solution and never will be because of physics. All things equal, the energy requirements to change elevation will be too great to justify adoption. There are lots of technical roadblocks to feasible flying cars but the cost of the potential energy to change elevation is not one of them. The optimal altitude flown would be lower for shorter trips, and when normal cars must change elevation (i.e, drive over hills/mountains), they do not use so much fuel as to make the trips infeasible. In a flying car, much more energy is used fighting air drag and gravity drag.
- iaw 10y ago
  > The optimal altitude flown would be lower for shorter trips Where does the column of flying cars go? Do they expand vertically or horizontally as traffic increases? In the underpopulated area's of the US where 10% of the population lives this is a feasible mode of transit, what about the 90% that actually have traffic? If the cars broaden vertically it's a safety risk, if the cars broaden horizontally it's a violation of property rights (and a different safety risk), if the cars don't broaden it rapidly becomes inefficient and dangerous. Also, with the advent of KERS and other regenerative systems cars will be able to recapture the bulk of energy consumed for elevation changes. To my knowledge there's no such effective system for planes. So the efficiency on cars is still higher than air vehicles.
  - jessriedel 10y ago
    > If the cars broaden vertically it's a safety risk, That's the evidence you're giving to dismiss the ability of flying cars to distribute over multiple altitude? Once we've accepted the hypothetical that technology allows for a single car to fly from A to B safely (which is almost certainly automated), it seems clear that having cars move at different altitude will be trivially possible. > Also, with the advent of KERS and other regenerative systems cars will be able to recapture the bulk of energy consumed for elevation changes. To my knowledge there's no such effective system for planes. So the efficiency on cars is still higher than air vehicles. No one is disputing that regular cars are more efficient than flying cars. But trucks are less efficient than container ships, and we still use the former when the latter is impossible or too slow. You said "Flying is not a valid commute solution and never will be because of physics", and this just isn't true.
    - inlineint 10y ago
      > Once we've accepted the hypothetical that technology allows for a single car to fly from A to B safely (which is almost certainly automated), it seems clear that having cars move at different altitude will be trivially possible. In real world we can't accept this because there are always unpredictable factors, we can only say that probability of a safe flight in a single car is say 99.999%. Then if there are 20 cars one right above another, then probability that none of them crash is only 99.98%, and it could damage all cars below it, so the resulting probability of safe flight in a car reduces to something of order 99.99% instead of 99.999% for a single car. And 99.99% is really not safe enough for everyday flying during many years.
      - jessriedel 10y ago
        Avoiding a car that crashes in the lane next to you is a lot harder than avoiding a car that falls 100 feet from above. Yet we have multi-lane highways.
        iaw 10y ago
        That's an asinine statement if I've ever read one. I've been present for 2 highways collisions, avoiding them is super easy. Which is why full lane closures and multi-car pile-ups are as infrequent as they are relative to the frequency of two car accidents. A vehicle that falls from 100 feet above will be accelerating unlike vehicles in an accident on a highway which will rapidly decelerate. Furthermore, you now have multiple vehicles taking evasive action based on dynamic predictions that cannot incorporate a collision. The second that one car hits another you're going to lose a chunk of your column from pachinko like bouncing. Now, instead of a small mechanical failure you can have drastic loss of life because all of the occupants plummeted to their death. Do you work for Uber?
  - mahyarm 10y ago
    Bridge chokepoints and other small hops over bodies of water / mountains are a great case for flying cars. It would be great for seattle, manhattan, SF, hawaii, islands, etc. You also don't need to build much infrastructure other than landing/takeoff sites. Large infrastructure alone, especially in a place like the USA is a big blocker.
nether 10y ago
> Flying is not a valid commute solution and never will be because of physics. All things equal, the energy requirements to change elevation will be too great to justify adoption. That only ensures that flying cars will always be more expensive than ground cars, not that per capita income will always be too low to have mass adoption of flying cars.
- iaw 10y ago
  > That only ensures that flying cars will always be more expensive than ground cars, not that per capita income will always be too low to have mass adoption of flying cars. True, but the economics of energy/housing/transit indicate that there never will be mass adoption if it's also the more expensive option.
  - ben_w 10y ago
    Cost is not the only concern, if it was then all cars would be the most energy efficient possible and Hummers with similar fuel efficiency to small Cessna aircraft would never have been made.
    - iaw 10y ago
      The ownership cost of a small Cessna drastically exceeds that of a hummer (purchase price + certification + maintenance). I'll take your word that they have equivalent fuel efficiencies. Cost isn't a big deal when it's less than a 50% increase, we're talking 3-5x here. This is equivalent not to a Hummer but to a Ferrari, that's a difference in sale volume that makes a flying car unit unsustainable give the increased non-traditional expenses.
  - LeifCarrotson 10y ago
    > True, but the economics of energy/housing/transit indicate that there never will be mass adoption if it's also the more expensive option. That depends largely on any negative value that's charged against living in an undesirable location, and on the subjective value a person ascribes to living in a desired location. And that subjective value can remain constant, while the cost of energy and transit decrease, and the economic value created by the person increases. Yes, it would probably be economically more efficient to live in low-cost housing projects within a few minutes walk of the offices of megacorporations. But millions of people (76% of Americans, according to this 2009 survey: http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/acs-15.pdf http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/acs-15.pdf) choose to drive an single-occupant automobile to work, averaging a 25-minute commute each way. And few would give up their acre of land and private home to live in an apartment closer to work. If you could take a high-speed helicopter from Monterey to an office in Silicon Valley for $5 and a 15-minute flight, instead of hours of your time, or $500 in helicopter costs, would you really live in on-campus housing because it was more economically efficient? Yes, flying a helicopter for an hour takes a lot of energy: on the order of 1,000 kilowatts per hour. And yes, helicopters are really expensive and niche. But technology is constantly decreasing both the cost of that energy and the difficulty and operating expenses of flying machines.
EJTH 10y ago
Tell that to all the Chinese companies that are in the midst of marketing hexacopters for city transportation...
- lolc 10y ago
  I'm interested in marketing brochures of said companies. Pray tell where can I find it?
  - EJTH 10y ago
    Of course, here you go: http://www.ehang.com/ehang184 http://www.ehang.com/ehang184 There is also a German project, the e-volo. http://www.e-volo.com/index.php/en/ http://www.e-volo.com/index.php/en/
    - FabHK 10y ago
      Where the later (the Volocopter) is more advanced in its development, I think (they've already had unmanned and manned test flights, and preliminary government approvals), as well as a better concept all in all (what with 18 rotors above the cockpit, rather than on 8 rotors on knee-level). Full disclosure: I've invested a trifling sum in the Volocopter, so I'm a believer... :-)
FabHK 10y ago
> Flying is not a valid commute solution and never will be because of physics. For reference, a Cessna 172 flies around 110 knots = 125 miles per hour, and uses about 10 gallons per hour, so it gets about 12 mpg. Granted, that's pretty bad, but that's about 1950's technology, and it's not orders of magnitudes. And in 3D you have MUCH more space (in fact, one reason that there are so relatively few mid air collisions is just the fact that "the sky is big".) So, I don't think aviation is out a priori "because physics".
- iaw 10y ago
  I'm glad you make this comparison because it leads directly to my point about why flight (in these forms) is infeasible as a broad consumer commute technology. In 1950 a car cost ~$1.5K in the US, GDP per capita was ~9.6K. So it was around 0.16 of GDP per Capita to purchase a new car. In 2016 GDP per capita had risen to $53k with a new car costing between 17K and 33K depending on how you look at it. This is 0.32 to 0.62 of GDP. More, but not horrible. A Cessna costs $160K, a 3x factor compared to GDP. So for around the price of a house (or down-payment) you can own a depreciating mechanical liability that enables you to commute marginally faster... The economics aren't there.
  - FabHK 10y ago
    True, economics aren't there. Question is whether that's because of unsurmountable physical limitations, or because of current engineering and current regulations. And that is not obvious. For what it's worth, I don't really see personal aviation take off anytime soon anywhere near as much as personal driving has - but some niches might become feasible with personal electronic VTOL aircraft (PEVA).
  - Robotbeat 10y ago
    There are about 2000 Cessnas produced every year, globally. If you only produced about 2000 cars per year, they'd cost on the order of $160,000 as well. The key is to produce tens of thousands of them (and more standardized than the Cessnas) so you can get mass production to work. And anyway, even if it cost that much, it's still a viable route for commuting using a rideshare service like Uber if you have 3-4 people sharing the same vehicle and you're shaving off 2 hours of commuting each day (500 hours extra per year at $30/hour gives you $15,000 extra per year PER PERSON).
zardo 10y ago
>Flying is not a valid commute solution and never will be because of physics. All things equal, the energy requirements to change elevation will be too great to justify adoption. Which is why birds only ever fly long distances, if it's just a few miles they hop it.
- slededit 10y ago
  To be fair, birds neither have wheels nor spent most of their evolution in a world with paved roads.
  - zardo 10y ago
    But that doesnt support my snarky comment, so I'll just say all abstractions are leaky and stand by it.
ordinarySeeker 10y ago
If we approach the problem from a perspective of "How to make flying a viable commute option?" we can come up with atleast a few scenarios 1) Cities near water bodies like SFO, NYC, Miami or even Chicago can benefit from over water flying cars. This provides some safety while making more areas livable within a short commute to downtown. 2) Places like Mumbai, Bangalore where car ownership has outpaced the governments ability to create roads causing massive traffic jams can be served by a vertical stacking approach you mentioned and leap frog the western worlds freeway model. By creating pre-defined paths in the air and having only autonomous flying cars, the governments can save money on building roads, parking etc and also provide a level of safety against rogue drivers and airspace violation
- espadrine 10y ago
  The original Hyperloop design relied on an air cushion, but nobody claimed that it was flying. A seaplane is similarly not considered a flying car, and is unlikely to be efficient. Nor is a hydroplane. As for cities with traffic jams, expecting governments that don't get enough in taxes to improve infrastructure to solve that by expecting the citizens to pay tremendous amounts for flying cars is unreasonable.
- FabHK 10y ago
  Yes, I think one of the first places where personal electric VTOL aircraft (PEVA) will take off are places where the rich use helicopters now - Sao Paolo, Jakarta, etc., basically geographically compact places with terrible traffic and massive income inequality.
- bogomipz 10y ago
  > Cities near water bodies like SFO, NYC, Miami or even Chicago can benefit from over water flying cars" I don't agree. While there may be less impediments to putting that traffic over the waterways the challenges are still significant. Just using NYC as an example: A high density of bridges. A High volume of existing commercial and passenger boat traffic. A number of busy heliports are located along the waterways. And although the rivers could help you navigate you up or downtown they provide no efficient means of going across town further limiting this as a viable option.
Xunxi 10y ago
The fact that big money is being funneled into the idea makes it more plausible that ever. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-09/welcome-to-larry-page-s-secret-flying-car-factories https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-09/welcome-t... Theres a lot of R&D going on behind the scenes, it no longer a lone wolf undertaking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g6cCYoDWzM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g6cCYoDWzM Its likely all these personal air vehicle will fly-by-wire; perhaps Uber leveraging Otto's core algorithm for other uses?
Xunxi 10y ago
The fact that big money is being funneled into the idea makes it more plausible that ever. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-09/welcome-to-larry-page-s-secret-flying-car-factories https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-09/welcome-t... Theres a lot of R&D going on behind the scenes, it no longer a lone wolf undertaking. Its likely all these personal air vehicle will fly-by-wire; perhaps Uber leveraging Otto's core algorithm for other uses? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g6cCYoDWzM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g6cCYoDWzM
- iaw 10y ago
  > The fact that big money is being funneled into the idea makes it more plausible that ever. Big money has been funneled into a number of pipe dreams before, it didn't make them practical.

by iaw 10y ago

jessriedel 10y ago

> Flying is not a valid commute solution and never will be because of physics. All things equal, the energy requirements to change elevation will be too great to justify adoption. There are lots of technical roadblocks to feasible flying cars but the cost of the potential energy to change elevation is not one of them. The optimal altitude flown would be lower for shorter trips, and when normal cars must change elevation (i.e, drive over hills/mountains), they do not use so much fuel as to make the trips infeasible. In a flying car, much more energy is used fighting air drag and gravity drag.

iaw 10y ago
> The optimal altitude flown would be lower for shorter trips Where does the column of flying cars go? Do they expand vertically or horizontally as traffic increases? In the underpopulated area's of the US where 10% of the population lives this is a feasible mode of transit, what about the 90% that actually have traffic? If the cars broaden vertically it's a safety risk, if the cars broaden horizontally it's a violation of property rights (and a different safety risk), if the cars don't broaden it rapidly becomes inefficient and dangerous. Also, with the advent of KERS and other regenerative systems cars will be able to recapture the bulk of energy consumed for elevation changes. To my knowledge there's no such effective system for planes. So the efficiency on cars is still higher than air vehicles.
- jessriedel 10y ago
  > If the cars broaden vertically it's a safety risk, That's the evidence you're giving to dismiss the ability of flying cars to distribute over multiple altitude? Once we've accepted the hypothetical that technology allows for a single car to fly from A to B safely (which is almost certainly automated), it seems clear that having cars move at different altitude will be trivially possible. > Also, with the advent of KERS and other regenerative systems cars will be able to recapture the bulk of energy consumed for elevation changes. To my knowledge there's no such effective system for planes. So the efficiency on cars is still higher than air vehicles. No one is disputing that regular cars are more efficient than flying cars. But trucks are less efficient than container ships, and we still use the former when the latter is impossible or too slow. You said "Flying is not a valid commute solution and never will be because of physics", and this just isn't true.
  - inlineint 10y ago
    > Once we've accepted the hypothetical that technology allows for a single car to fly from A to B safely (which is almost certainly automated), it seems clear that having cars move at different altitude will be trivially possible. In real world we can't accept this because there are always unpredictable factors, we can only say that probability of a safe flight in a single car is say 99.999%. Then if there are 20 cars one right above another, then probability that none of them crash is only 99.98%, and it could damage all cars below it, so the resulting probability of safe flight in a car reduces to something of order 99.99% instead of 99.999% for a single car. And 99.99% is really not safe enough for everyday flying during many years.
    - jessriedel 10y ago
      Avoiding a car that crashes in the lane next to you is a lot harder than avoiding a car that falls 100 feet from above. Yet we have multi-lane highways.
      - iaw 10y ago
        That's an asinine statement if I've ever read one. I've been present for 2 highways collisions, avoiding them is super easy. Which is why full lane closures and multi-car pile-ups are as infrequent as they are relative to the frequency of two car accidents. A vehicle that falls from 100 feet above will be accelerating unlike vehicles in an accident on a highway which will rapidly decelerate. Furthermore, you now have multiple vehicles taking evasive action based on dynamic predictions that cannot incorporate a collision. The second that one car hits another you're going to lose a chunk of your column from pachinko like bouncing. Now, instead of a small mechanical failure you can have drastic loss of life because all of the occupants plummeted to their death. Do you work for Uber?
- mahyarm 10y ago
  Bridge chokepoints and other small hops over bodies of water / mountains are a great case for flying cars. It would be great for seattle, manhattan, SF, hawaii, islands, etc. You also don't need to build much infrastructure other than landing/takeoff sites. Large infrastructure alone, especially in a place like the USA is a big blocker.

nether 10y ago

> Flying is not a valid commute solution and never will be because of physics. All things equal, the energy requirements to change elevation will be too great to justify adoption. That only ensures that flying cars will always be more expensive than ground cars, not that per capita income will always be too low to have mass adoption of flying cars.

iaw 10y ago
> That only ensures that flying cars will always be more expensive than ground cars, not that per capita income will always be too low to have mass adoption of flying cars. True, but the economics of energy/housing/transit indicate that there never will be mass adoption if it's also the more expensive option.
- ben_w 10y ago
  Cost is not the only concern, if it was then all cars would be the most energy efficient possible and Hummers with similar fuel efficiency to small Cessna aircraft would never have been made.
  - iaw 10y ago
    The ownership cost of a small Cessna drastically exceeds that of a hummer (purchase price + certification + maintenance). I'll take your word that they have equivalent fuel efficiencies. Cost isn't a big deal when it's less than a 50% increase, we're talking 3-5x here. This is equivalent not to a Hummer but to a Ferrari, that's a difference in sale volume that makes a flying car unit unsustainable give the increased non-traditional expenses.
- LeifCarrotson 10y ago
  > True, but the economics of energy/housing/transit indicate that there never will be mass adoption if it's also the more expensive option. That depends largely on any negative value that's charged against living in an undesirable location, and on the subjective value a person ascribes to living in a desired location. And that subjective value can remain constant, while the cost of energy and transit decrease, and the economic value created by the person increases. Yes, it would probably be economically more efficient to live in low-cost housing projects within a few minutes walk of the offices of megacorporations. But millions of people (76% of Americans, according to this 2009 survey: http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/acs-15.pdf http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/acs-15.pdf) choose to drive an single-occupant automobile to work, averaging a 25-minute commute each way. And few would give up their acre of land and private home to live in an apartment closer to work. If you could take a high-speed helicopter from Monterey to an office in Silicon Valley for $5 and a 15-minute flight, instead of hours of your time, or $500 in helicopter costs, would you really live in on-campus housing because it was more economically efficient? Yes, flying a helicopter for an hour takes a lot of energy: on the order of 1,000 kilowatts per hour. And yes, helicopters are really expensive and niche. But technology is constantly decreasing both the cost of that energy and the difficulty and operating expenses of flying machines.

EJTH 10y ago

Tell that to all the Chinese companies that are in the midst of marketing hexacopters for city transportation...

lolc 10y ago
I'm interested in marketing brochures of said companies. Pray tell where can I find it?
- EJTH 10y ago
  Of course, here you go: http://www.ehang.com/ehang184 http://www.ehang.com/ehang184 There is also a German project, the e-volo. http://www.e-volo.com/index.php/en/ http://www.e-volo.com/index.php/en/
  - FabHK 10y ago
    Where the later (the Volocopter) is more advanced in its development, I think (they've already had unmanned and manned test flights, and preliminary government approvals), as well as a better concept all in all (what with 18 rotors above the cockpit, rather than on 8 rotors on knee-level). Full disclosure: I've invested a trifling sum in the Volocopter, so I'm a believer... :-)

FabHK 10y ago

> Flying is not a valid commute solution and never will be because of physics. For reference, a Cessna 172 flies around 110 knots = 125 miles per hour, and uses about 10 gallons per hour, so it gets about 12 mpg. Granted, that's pretty bad, but that's about 1950's technology, and it's not orders of magnitudes. And in 3D you have MUCH more space (in fact, one reason that there are so relatively few mid air collisions is just the fact that "the sky is big".) So, I don't think aviation is out a priori "because physics".

iaw 10y ago
I'm glad you make this comparison because it leads directly to my point about why flight (in these forms) is infeasible as a broad consumer commute technology. In 1950 a car cost ~$1.5K in the US, GDP per capita was ~9.6K. So it was around 0.16 of GDP per Capita to purchase a new car. In 2016 GDP per capita had risen to $53k with a new car costing between 17K and 33K depending on how you look at it. This is 0.32 to 0.62 of GDP. More, but not horrible. A Cessna costs $160K, a 3x factor compared to GDP. So for around the price of a house (or down-payment) you can own a depreciating mechanical liability that enables you to commute marginally faster... The economics aren't there.
- FabHK 10y ago
  True, economics aren't there. Question is whether that's because of unsurmountable physical limitations, or because of current engineering and current regulations. And that is not obvious. For what it's worth, I don't really see personal aviation take off anytime soon anywhere near as much as personal driving has - but some niches might become feasible with personal electronic VTOL aircraft (PEVA).
- Robotbeat 10y ago
  There are about 2000 Cessnas produced every year, globally. If you only produced about 2000 cars per year, they'd cost on the order of $160,000 as well. The key is to produce tens of thousands of them (and more standardized than the Cessnas) so you can get mass production to work. And anyway, even if it cost that much, it's still a viable route for commuting using a rideshare service like Uber if you have 3-4 people sharing the same vehicle and you're shaving off 2 hours of commuting each day (500 hours extra per year at $30/hour gives you $15,000 extra per year PER PERSON).

zardo 10y ago

>Flying is not a valid commute solution and never will be because of physics. All things equal, the energy requirements to change elevation will be too great to justify adoption. Which is why birds only ever fly long distances, if it's just a few miles they hop it.

slededit 10y ago
To be fair, birds neither have wheels nor spent most of their evolution in a world with paved roads.
- zardo 10y ago
  But that doesnt support my snarky comment, so I'll just say all abstractions are leaky and stand by it.

ordinarySeeker 10y ago

If we approach the problem from a perspective of "How to make flying a viable commute option?" we can come up with atleast a few scenarios 1) Cities near water bodies like SFO, NYC, Miami or even Chicago can benefit from over water flying cars. This provides some safety while making more areas livable within a short commute to downtown. 2) Places like Mumbai, Bangalore where car ownership has outpaced the governments ability to create roads causing massive traffic jams can be served by a vertical stacking approach you mentioned and leap frog the western worlds freeway model. By creating pre-defined paths in the air and having only autonomous flying cars, the governments can save money on building roads, parking etc and also provide a level of safety against rogue drivers and airspace violation

espadrine 10y ago
The original Hyperloop design relied on an air cushion, but nobody claimed that it was flying. A seaplane is similarly not considered a flying car, and is unlikely to be efficient. Nor is a hydroplane. As for cities with traffic jams, expecting governments that don't get enough in taxes to improve infrastructure to solve that by expecting the citizens to pay tremendous amounts for flying cars is unreasonable.
FabHK 10y ago
Yes, I think one of the first places where personal electric VTOL aircraft (PEVA) will take off are places where the rich use helicopters now - Sao Paolo, Jakarta, etc., basically geographically compact places with terrible traffic and massive income inequality.
bogomipz 10y ago
> Cities near water bodies like SFO, NYC, Miami or even Chicago can benefit from over water flying cars" I don't agree. While there may be less impediments to putting that traffic over the waterways the challenges are still significant. Just using NYC as an example: A high density of bridges. A High volume of existing commercial and passenger boat traffic. A number of busy heliports are located along the waterways. And although the rivers could help you navigate you up or downtown they provide no efficient means of going across town further limiting this as a viable option.

Xunxi 10y ago

The fact that big money is being funneled into the idea makes it more plausible that ever. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-09/welcome-to-larry-page-s-secret-flying-car-factories https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-09/welcome-t... Theres a lot of R&D going on behind the scenes, it no longer a lone wolf undertaking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g6cCYoDWzM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g6cCYoDWzM Its likely all these personal air vehicle will fly-by-wire; perhaps Uber leveraging Otto's core algorithm for other uses?

Xunxi 10y ago

The fact that big money is being funneled into the idea makes it more plausible that ever. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-09/welcome-to-larry-page-s-secret-flying-car-factories https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-09/welcome-t... Theres a lot of R&D going on behind the scenes, it no longer a lone wolf undertaking. Its likely all these personal air vehicle will fly-by-wire; perhaps Uber leveraging Otto's core algorithm for other uses? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g6cCYoDWzM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g6cCYoDWzM

iaw 10y ago
> The fact that big money is being funneled into the idea makes it more plausible that ever. Big money has been funneled into a number of pipe dreams before, it didn't make them practical.