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IMO, what has even more transformative potential is human-carrying drones. Flying, self-driving taxis. That could really shorten commute time, and allow people

IMO, what has even more transformative potential is human-carrying drones. Flying, self-driving taxis. That could really shorten commute time, and allow people to live very far from work. You could easily live 100KM away, and make that commute in 30 minutes. It would completely change urbanization and population density. It's maybe not that far away either. Self-driving air vehicles is in many ways simpler than making something that can understand driving on the road and interacting with human drivers. The main limitation right now is that we aren't quite there yet on battery tech, we maybe need a factor of 2 or 3 improvement in power density for this technology to become inevitable.

MagnumOpus 9y ago
> The main limitation right now is that we aren't quite there yet on battery tech That might be the main tech limitation (don't agree with that either because flight coordination is actually a bigger problem. The actual MAIN limitation is that in an urban area (where 95% of jobs are) no resident is going to stand for helicopter noise by thousands of commuters at all hours. And creating a drone/copter that is quiet while transporting people-sized payloads is a much bigger challenge than creating one which is fuel efficient.