11 ms·

Contrary to almost every comment here so far, this is both innovative and energy efficient. Let's talk energy efficiency first. Once it's up in the air, it's h

Contrary to almost every comment here so far, this is both innovative and energy efficient. Let's talk energy efficiency first. Once it's up in the air, it's has a similar profile to a normal single engine airplane. A Cirrus SR22 can go 1,200 miles on 80 gallons of gas. That's roughly speaking 15 miles per gallon - better than many pickup trucks or large SUVs. And that's while going 180 mph. Slower is more fuel efficient. This aircraft is definitely going to make noise on takeoff and landing, but it's not going to make much noise while cruising. The Dodecacopter/regular aircraft hybrid solves a lot of problems. Once it is in cruise mode, it is as safe as a regular small aircraft. Importantly, unlike a quadcopter, it does not crash immediately on loss of engine power - it can glide to a landing somewhere, or use a parachute, or land with its Dodecacopter rotors. Unlike a rotor craft, this aircraft is very energy efficient while cruising. The Dodecacopter side lets it take off and land in even more places than a helicopter. It looks like it has redundancy for any two rotors/motors to go out. If this happens on takeoff, you fly to an airport to land. If this happens on landing, you leave the aircraft on the ground until someone comes and fixes you. You skip all the transmission and cyclic complexity of a helicopter. This is going to cost a whole lot less to maintain than a helicopter. In short, this has potential to be way better than either a helicopter or a small airplane. Even ignoring the air-taxi business, there's a market for this aircraft. So let's flip to the business side. An easy target for making these at scale would be $500,000 per aircraft. (Might be able to half that, but lets be conservative). Operating costs at scale, max $100/hr, could be one quarter that. On the revenue side, this would replace a two hour trip across a city in traffic with a fifteen minute flight. Unless you've flow small aircraft before it's hard to appreciate just how much faster it is not to use roads. There's definitely going to be some market for this - that's worth money.

soVeryTired 9y ago
> On the revenue side, this would replace a two hour trip across a city in traffic with a fifteen minute flight. If a city takes two hours to cross in traffic, that's a clear sign it needs a subway or monorail.
- manmal 9y ago
  Which both cost billions over billions, and you will not achieve that good connection for the majority of citizens with just one line.
  - soVeryTired 9y ago
    They're expensive, but massively more efficient than other transport. Plus they reduce congestion for anyone who doesn't have easy access. I could understand why say, Lagos wouldn't have effective mass transit. But it's hard to see why major developed-world cities can't justify the investment.
    - manmal 9y ago
      I think people misunderstand my GP comment. I am VERY pro subway and public transport in general, and I go by bike whenever I can. But there’s a tool for every job, and one subway line won’t solve the same problem a thousand air taxis are going to solve. They don’t even play in the same league. One connects city parts loosely together and relies on other last-mile means of transport (walking, taxi, park&ride, kiss&ride, bike,...); while the other is a whole-in-one, it’s more exclusive (use once per month vs twice per day) and way faster (minutes instead of hours). Do we need more subways? Heck yes! I want one in my hometown. Do we want air taxis at the same time? Well, why not?
raducu 9y ago
Imagine being able to live 90 miles from a town and commuting in 30 minutes regadless of peak hours. As for the noise, if it can land vertically, I can immagine it making a steep descent on top of a tall building, unloading passengers and then autonomously taking off to pick somone else some other place.
- melling 9y ago
  Yeah, now imagine tens of thousands people an hour being able to do that. I hear they have trains that can do this in far away lands. Trains that go 180 mph. Not in my backyard.
  - kazinator 9y ago
    Trains that go 180 mph have a way of draining your pocketbook. If you don't work near a station, or live near one (or, worse, both) you face commuting hassles. You may have to take a train that averages 30 mph as it makes all stops to get to the 180 mph express one.
    - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
      It actually works well enough in japan: 15-20 minutes on a local to get to the Shinkansen station, then an hour on that, then another 15-20 minutes to get where you are going. Not really in daily commute range, but definitely viable weekly.
- jdavis703 9y ago
  There will still be traffic if everyone is heading in to the same few spots. There's only so many spots these things will be able to land, not to mention they will need to maintain a certain amount of separation from other air traffic.
- ameister14 9y ago
  It won't be 30 minutes. It'd be a few hours. First because they said it could go faster than 150kph, which means it tops out at roughly 90 miles an hour. Second, the range of the thing is about 60 miles, so you'd have to charge it partway.
jasonmaydie 9y ago
The two words you need when making a justification is reliable and safe. It won't matter how innovative and energy efficient it is if it doesn't meet the above requirements. If the osprey taught as anything, flying unconventionally is hard.
- danielvf 9y ago
  I totally agree with you - getting this to beyond current single engine aircraft safety rates is going to be the challenge. However, they've got a far better starting platform for doing this than anything else I've seen. It's made out of simple pieces with a lot of good options when things go wrong.
ethagknight 9y ago
Agree with most of what you say, but two open questions- debt alone on $500k amounts to $180/day (10yr am, 6%). Then there’s cost of energy, dead time during recharge, dead leg trips to the next customer, dead let to charge port, maintenance will be rigorous even if the plane doesn’t need it because FAA. Landing fees while be high for urban landing points, plus ground crew at some locations. “Max $100/hr” is way low, even Uber sits around that level for a $30k vehicle with 2x the efficiency. Second- I have a hard one understanding how this could approach the aerodynamics of a Cirrus. All those fans will be drag monsters. And a little side fun note on rooftop landing pads- ideally, a high rise has expose cooling towers on the roof, taking up most available space. Any rooftop landing facility would have to be constructed over that, at phenomenal cost per foot. Developers expect to get repaid handsomely for that kind of capex. If you aren’t landing rooftop, you are landing at an alternate location X blocks away, which could be a real drag of the other kind.. There is DEFINITELY a market for this plane, and it’s bigger than current heli, but it’s probably not ubiquitous air taxi service
- programbreeding 9y ago
  I imagine this same conversation when the car was first becoming a reality. You have to start somewhere.
  - soVeryTired 9y ago
    Also the hovercraft - it's just that those turned out to be pretty niche.
- jgalt212 9y ago
  Great video on the Pan Am building rooftop helicopter service to NYC area airports. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nbz5VFilxY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nbz5VFilxY
  - chiph 9y ago
    The family flew on one of New York Airways' helicopters from Newark to Kennedy back in 1974. Pretty exciting stuff for a 4th grader!
nradov 9y ago
This aircraft can't take off and land any place that a helicopter can't. It's subject to the same laws of physics, and the same safety and noise regulations. But it may find a niche market by being faster, cheaper, and easier to fly than existing light helicopters.
- ameister14 9y ago
  The noise regulations part does make a difference, as this is significantly quieter than a helicopter.
  - nradov 9y ago
    That remains to be heard. The electric motors might be marginally quieter than current helicopter engines but ultimately the rotors still have to move the same amount of air.
- fastball 9y ago
  In addition to ameister14's point, OP was also pointing out that you can glide to land on little to no power, where as a helicopter can't do that.
  - snaily 9y ago
    A helicopter can survive a complete engine out at any point during appropriately chosen flight regimes: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_height%E2%80%93velocity_diagram https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_height%E2%80%93ve... In my layman understanding: the heuristic amounts to - at low altitudes you flare and cushion, and at high altitudes you enter autorotation.
  - gambiting 9y ago
    Helicopters have a mechanism called autorotation which ensures safe(albeit sharp) landing when the engine fails.
  - thedrbrian 9y ago
    Helicopters can autorotate which isn’t as efficient as a glide but will still get one down safely.
cowsandmilk 9y ago
> A Cirrus SR22 can go 1,200 miles on 80 gallons of gas. That's roughly speaking 15 miles per gallon - better than many pickup trucks or large SUVs. Sure, let's take the most energy efficient aircraft and compare it to the least energy efficient passenger vehicles??? I mean, how can one even pretend that is a fair comparison. More generally for energy efficiency, it is well known that the most efficient trip is a shorter one or one never taken. Many fans of these technologies are people who dream of living 90 miles away and fly into town in half an hour. Or as you described "this would replace a two hour trip across a city in traffic with a fifteen minute flight". Comparing MPG when your technology is designed to encourage more miles is a flawed approach.
- kayfox 9y ago
  I think lowering the time cost of coming into the office would lead to more telecommuting than less. Since you can get into the office in 15 minutes, you don't have to go to the office every day just in case you need to have an impromptu meeting.
- danielvf 9y ago
  We do seem to have different value systems. I believe applying energy to make human lives better is a great thing! Electricity usage in the western world is getting greener fast. Total usage is going down, not up. This isn't going to reverse either of those trends. There's a popular perception that all aircraft burn energy like an oil refinery on fire. The reality is that small piston aircraft are approximately as fuel efficient as the vehicles around you on the highway (at least where I live) while getting you there a whole lot faster. A Cirrus is a good comparison stand in for the KittyHawk aircraft because it has a similar design and construction style (ignoring the dodeca-props), four seats, and is the most common general aviation aircraft not designed in the 1950's. A Cirrus isn't even close to the most energy efficient aircraft - that would be more like 60 mpg, nor is it the most efficient in its class.
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ChuckMcM 9y ago
I was thinking something similar, and per the Bend Oregon article that was here before (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16517929 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16517929) it could make commuting work from further away, although with only 100 mile range that is a bit challenging. (Bend to SF is 500 miles) I am also wondering about the ergonomics for people who are mobility challenged. On the plus side, their launch material successfully has gotten me past thinking that they are building quad copters for people into thinking about what they might be used for. The numbers pencil out for relatively short commutes.
syntaxing 9y ago
I don't get how it is physically possible that this plane is energy efficient? The smaller prop, the less efficient the thrust conversion. You also need laminar air for rear props to be efficient. The drag on the wings should create a ridiculous wake behind the aircraft. I would love to learn how KittyHawk are trying to mitigate these problems (which are huge constraints even for major players).
- BatFastard 9y ago
  It is all relative on efficiency IMHO. And since it is electric which can be powered by "clean energy" how do you measure it.
  - syntaxing 9y ago
    Efficiency is not relative especially when it comes to mechanical movement. It is quantifiable data and nature does not care whether the energy is "green" or "clean". Energy is energy regardless how it is produced. Though the best data they can provide is the lift to drag ratio at cruise speed. This will give us a pretty good idea on how this aircraft performs.
    - ZeroGravitas 9y ago
      Just be careful about how you quantify, the energy needed to overcome that drag ratio will presumably be delivered far more efficiently via electric moters, since they'll not be throwing 2/3rds of the energy away as heat. So an electric plane could be twice as inefficient in other ways (e.g. extra weight for batteries) and still come out ahead overall. And that's before taking carbon and pollution into account.
- sangnoir 9y ago
  > I don't get how it is physically possible that this plane is energy efficient? Energy efficiency is not all or none - it's a question of how efficient it is. Whichever way you dice it, the final result of the combination of energy density, thrust, weight lift, drag, is a plane is efficient enough to have a claimed range of 100km. If it were more efficient, it would have a longer range.
pc86 9y ago
Wow there are all kinds of strained comparisons here as the other comment mentions. One, comparing one of the most fuel efficient ASEL aircraft compared against one of the least fuel efficient passenger vehicle categories. Nobody uses pickup trucks for taxis. Nobody uses large SUVs unless you specifically request them (and they typically have a surcharge). > Once it is in cruise mode, it is as safe as a regular small aircraft. Well landing and taking off are the two most dangerous phases of flight. "Once you ignore the two most dangerous phases of operation, operation is as safe as you'd expect." Not to mention that small aircraft/general aviation is not safe. Most life insurance excludes it. If you're under 140 hours TT and not instrument rated, life insurance that explicitly includes GA is prohibitively expensive (I received a quote at 80 TT and pre-IR for nearly $300/mo for a 10 year term on an otherwise healthy 30 year old male, comparable policies with a GA exclusion are $10-12/mo). The most optimistic figures put GA roughly on par with riding a motorcycle without a helmet. > An easy target for making these at scale would be $500,000 per aircraft. Look up the cost of a new Diamond DA-20 or Robinson R44. There is no way you can build one of these things for less than $750k+ at cost so you're going to need to sell them at 1.5-2x that or more. And that's at scale. And speaking of scale, what do you think the market for these things is? You're not going to be selling millions of them. Cessna sells a shitload of planes compared to the rest of the industry and they sell one factory new plane a week, almost exclusively to large institutional flight schools. > Operating costs at scale, max $100/hr I know "lol" is code for "I breathed through my nose a little louder," but this actually did make me laugh. Operating costs will be the 2-3 times this at scale. And 5x+ now. I fly a single-engine plane with over 30,000 units in production (PA-28-181). They're everywhere. The lower HP version is a very popular trainer aircraft, and as such need to have low costs of ownership and maintenance, and high reliability. I fly this plane as part of a non-profit club and still pay $100/mo and $100/hr to fly a 45 year old plane with no autopilot, steam gauges and a carbureted engine.
nickbauman 9y ago
Maybe remove the rose-colored glasses? 1) 15 minutes? If you flew in a small aircraft regularly, you would know it takes 40-60 minutes to prep a plane from park to airborne in zero traffic. 2) Estimating what the fuel consumption of a small aircraft will be is much, much harder than a surface vehicle. Consider 90% private aviation disasters are a result of pilot error. And 90% of pilot error is in fuel consumption estimation.
- danielvf 9y ago
  That fifteen minutes is for flying time in air taxi service. So you get into an aircraft ready to fly. I'm guessing two minutes of liftoff/landing and transitional flight on either end, and 11 minutes/22 miles of cruise in between.
- cbr 9y ago
  15 minutes? If you flew in a small aircraft regularly, you would know it takes 40-60 minutes to prep a plane from park to airborne in zero traffic How much of that prep is eliminated by going full automation? Isn't most of the prep the pilot running through a checklist? If there is unavoidable time consuming checking, you could do that in advance and provide the plane as an autonomous taxi. So it shows up, picks you up, drops you off.
  - knodi123 9y ago
    > Isn't most of the prep the pilot running through a checklist Yes, but... Things like "check your propeller for cracks", or "verify that the control surfaces are actually moving when the controls say they should have moved" should not be skipped. But you can skip a lot of things just by virtue of this being an electric vehicle - like "visually verify fuel level without using the gauge", or "check oil level", or "test carb heat" or "verify dual magnetos" etc.
    - cbr 9y ago
      If these are automated, though, they can be done in parallel. A camera pointed at the propellers can be checking them for cracks at the same time that another camera is checking that control surfaces actually move.
markab21 9y ago
Not to be overly nit-picky, you obviously know ASEL referencing the Cirrus but maybe I can add a little more of my own experience. I own a Cirrus SR20, and I'm lucky at cruise to get more than 12-14mpg running 8.5gph lean of peak at altitude. I just recently flew a NA SR22 up to Philadelphia from Tampa and averaged about 12mpg. You might hit those numbers you mentioned in a turbo at flight levels, but not low, and certainly without a tailwind. The operating costs for my SR20 with all things taken into account: Oil, Hangar Costs, annual inspection and averaged annual repairs, engine overhaul allowance are close to being conservative $160/hr fuel included vs. about $70 about it being fuel alone. From my calculations, if I went with a NA SR22, I'd be closer to $200/hr for a non-turbo, and about $260 for a SR22T. Keep in mind, those hourly costs don't take into account the capital costs, depreciation and other training expenses required to operate the vehicle. It's hard to compare costs of a vehicle to an aircraft. To drive to the airport, pre-flight the plane.. file a flight plan and deal with being re-routed the terminal area trying to get into a busy airport often undermine the time savings of just driving, unless i'm flying out of the state. I don't fly because it's convenient or faster. I do it because the feeling of watching the earth drift away from you when the plane is leaving the runway never gets old. I love flying. :)
- danielvf 9y ago
  Thanks for some real numbers!
starpilot 9y ago
The performance of this aircraft is piss poor. Why compare it to as SR22? Let's try an R22. R22 Range 240 miles Speed 110 mph Price $250k Cora Range 60 miles (1/4 that of the R22, 1/20th of the SR22) Speed 93 mph (half that of the SR22) Price ??? This thing is a dog. Cool design, I think it has promise, but let's not pretend this is in any way more than a concept being shoehorned into a niche commercial application.
baybal2 9y ago
It would be happy if they had anybody of who has some semblance of an aircraft design engineer background. Their first try: zee aero made a barely flyable contraption that was nuked by American FAA, and rightfully so. http://wap.business-standard.com/article-amp/international/larry-page-is-secretly-investing-millions-to-build-flying-cars-116061000001_1.html http://wap.business-standard.com/article-amp/international/l... This time, I don't see this being much better. My early childhood aspiration was aeronautics. I believe as somebody who built a semiflyable motoglider as a 15 years old in 2006, I can comment on technical soundness of this. Biggest red flag in the design are fans in front of the wing. Turbulence from them will be randomly stalling the wing, and most likely asymmetrically - which leads to a corkscrewing risk, especially with that huge elevator.

soVeryTired 9y ago

> On the revenue side, this would replace a two hour trip across a city in traffic with a fifteen minute flight. If a city takes two hours to cross in traffic, that's a clear sign it needs a subway or monorail.

manmal 9y ago
Which both cost billions over billions, and you will not achieve that good connection for the majority of citizens with just one line.
- soVeryTired 9y ago
  They're expensive, but massively more efficient than other transport. Plus they reduce congestion for anyone who doesn't have easy access. I could understand why say, Lagos wouldn't have effective mass transit. But it's hard to see why major developed-world cities can't justify the investment.
  - manmal 9y ago
    I think people misunderstand my GP comment. I am VERY pro subway and public transport in general, and I go by bike whenever I can. But there’s a tool for every job, and one subway line won’t solve the same problem a thousand air taxis are going to solve. They don’t even play in the same league. One connects city parts loosely together and relies on other last-mile means of transport (walking, taxi, park&ride, kiss&ride, bike,...); while the other is a whole-in-one, it’s more exclusive (use once per month vs twice per day) and way faster (minutes instead of hours). Do we need more subways? Heck yes! I want one in my hometown. Do we want air taxis at the same time? Well, why not?

raducu 9y ago

Imagine being able to live 90 miles from a town and commuting in 30 minutes regadless of peak hours. As for the noise, if it can land vertically, I can immagine it making a steep descent on top of a tall building, unloading passengers and then autonomously taking off to pick somone else some other place.

melling 9y ago
Yeah, now imagine tens of thousands people an hour being able to do that. I hear they have trains that can do this in far away lands. Trains that go 180 mph. Not in my backyard.
- kazinator 9y ago
  Trains that go 180 mph have a way of draining your pocketbook. If you don't work near a station, or live near one (or, worse, both) you face commuting hassles. You may have to take a train that averages 30 mph as it makes all stops to get to the 180 mph express one.
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    It actually works well enough in japan: 15-20 minutes on a local to get to the Shinkansen station, then an hour on that, then another 15-20 minutes to get where you are going. Not really in daily commute range, but definitely viable weekly.
jdavis703 9y ago
There will still be traffic if everyone is heading in to the same few spots. There's only so many spots these things will be able to land, not to mention they will need to maintain a certain amount of separation from other air traffic.
ameister14 9y ago
It won't be 30 minutes. It'd be a few hours. First because they said it could go faster than 150kph, which means it tops out at roughly 90 miles an hour. Second, the range of the thing is about 60 miles, so you'd have to charge it partway.

jasonmaydie 9y ago

The two words you need when making a justification is reliable and safe. It won't matter how innovative and energy efficient it is if it doesn't meet the above requirements. If the osprey taught as anything, flying unconventionally is hard.

danielvf 9y ago
I totally agree with you - getting this to beyond current single engine aircraft safety rates is going to be the challenge. However, they've got a far better starting platform for doing this than anything else I've seen. It's made out of simple pieces with a lot of good options when things go wrong.

ethagknight 9y ago

Agree with most of what you say, but two open questions- debt alone on $500k amounts to $180/day (10yr am, 6%). Then there’s cost of energy, dead time during recharge, dead leg trips to the next customer, dead let to charge port, maintenance will be rigorous even if the plane doesn’t need it because FAA. Landing fees while be high for urban landing points, plus ground crew at some locations. “Max $100/hr” is way low, even Uber sits around that level for a $30k vehicle with 2x the efficiency. Second- I have a hard one understanding how this could approach the aerodynamics of a Cirrus. All those fans will be drag monsters. And a little side fun note on rooftop landing pads- ideally, a high rise has expose cooling towers on the roof, taking up most available space. Any rooftop landing facility would have to be constructed over that, at phenomenal cost per foot. Developers expect to get repaid handsomely for that kind of capex. If you aren’t landing rooftop, you are landing at an alternate location X blocks away, which could be a real drag of the other kind.. There is DEFINITELY a market for this plane, and it’s bigger than current heli, but it’s probably not ubiquitous air taxi service

programbreeding 9y ago
I imagine this same conversation when the car was first becoming a reality. You have to start somewhere.
- soVeryTired 9y ago
  Also the hovercraft - it's just that those turned out to be pretty niche.
jgalt212 9y ago
Great video on the Pan Am building rooftop helicopter service to NYC area airports. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nbz5VFilxY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nbz5VFilxY
- chiph 9y ago
  The family flew on one of New York Airways' helicopters from Newark to Kennedy back in 1974. Pretty exciting stuff for a 4th grader!

nradov 9y ago

This aircraft can't take off and land any place that a helicopter can't. It's subject to the same laws of physics, and the same safety and noise regulations. But it may find a niche market by being faster, cheaper, and easier to fly than existing light helicopters.

ameister14 9y ago
The noise regulations part does make a difference, as this is significantly quieter than a helicopter.
- nradov 9y ago
  That remains to be heard. The electric motors might be marginally quieter than current helicopter engines but ultimately the rotors still have to move the same amount of air.
fastball 9y ago
In addition to ameister14's point, OP was also pointing out that you can glide to land on little to no power, where as a helicopter can't do that.
- snaily 9y ago
  A helicopter can survive a complete engine out at any point during appropriately chosen flight regimes: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_height%E2%80%93velocity_diagram https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_height%E2%80%93ve... In my layman understanding: the heuristic amounts to - at low altitudes you flare and cushion, and at high altitudes you enter autorotation.
- gambiting 9y ago
  Helicopters have a mechanism called autorotation which ensures safe(albeit sharp) landing when the engine fails.
- thedrbrian 9y ago
  Helicopters can autorotate which isn’t as efficient as a glide but will still get one down safely.

cowsandmilk 9y ago

> A Cirrus SR22 can go 1,200 miles on 80 gallons of gas. That's roughly speaking 15 miles per gallon - better than many pickup trucks or large SUVs. Sure, let's take the most energy efficient aircraft and compare it to the least energy efficient passenger vehicles??? I mean, how can one even pretend that is a fair comparison. More generally for energy efficiency, it is well known that the most efficient trip is a shorter one or one never taken. Many fans of these technologies are people who dream of living 90 miles away and fly into town in half an hour. Or as you described "this would replace a two hour trip across a city in traffic with a fifteen minute flight". Comparing MPG when your technology is designed to encourage more miles is a flawed approach.

kayfox 9y ago
I think lowering the time cost of coming into the office would lead to more telecommuting than less. Since you can get into the office in 15 minutes, you don't have to go to the office every day just in case you need to have an impromptu meeting.
danielvf 9y ago
We do seem to have different value systems. I believe applying energy to make human lives better is a great thing! Electricity usage in the western world is getting greener fast. Total usage is going down, not up. This isn't going to reverse either of those trends. There's a popular perception that all aircraft burn energy like an oil refinery on fire. The reality is that small piston aircraft are approximately as fuel efficient as the vehicles around you on the highway (at least where I live) while getting you there a whole lot faster. A Cirrus is a good comparison stand in for the KittyHawk aircraft because it has a similar design and construction style (ignoring the dodeca-props), four seats, and is the most common general aviation aircraft not designed in the 1950's. A Cirrus isn't even close to the most energy efficient aircraft - that would be more like 60 mpg, nor is it the most efficient in its class.
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ChuckMcM 9y ago

I was thinking something similar, and per the Bend Oregon article that was here before (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16517929 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16517929) it could make commuting work from further away, although with only 100 mile range that is a bit challenging. (Bend to SF is 500 miles) I am also wondering about the ergonomics for people who are mobility challenged. On the plus side, their launch material successfully has gotten me past thinking that they are building quad copters for people into thinking about what they might be used for. The numbers pencil out for relatively short commutes.

syntaxing 9y ago

I don't get how it is physically possible that this plane is energy efficient? The smaller prop, the less efficient the thrust conversion. You also need laminar air for rear props to be efficient. The drag on the wings should create a ridiculous wake behind the aircraft. I would love to learn how KittyHawk are trying to mitigate these problems (which are huge constraints even for major players).

BatFastard 9y ago
It is all relative on efficiency IMHO. And since it is electric which can be powered by "clean energy" how do you measure it.
- syntaxing 9y ago
  Efficiency is not relative especially when it comes to mechanical movement. It is quantifiable data and nature does not care whether the energy is "green" or "clean". Energy is energy regardless how it is produced. Though the best data they can provide is the lift to drag ratio at cruise speed. This will give us a pretty good idea on how this aircraft performs.
  - ZeroGravitas 9y ago
    Just be careful about how you quantify, the energy needed to overcome that drag ratio will presumably be delivered far more efficiently via electric moters, since they'll not be throwing 2/3rds of the energy away as heat. So an electric plane could be twice as inefficient in other ways (e.g. extra weight for batteries) and still come out ahead overall. And that's before taking carbon and pollution into account.
sangnoir 9y ago
> I don't get how it is physically possible that this plane is energy efficient? Energy efficiency is not all or none - it's a question of how efficient it is. Whichever way you dice it, the final result of the combination of energy density, thrust, weight lift, drag, is a plane is efficient enough to have a claimed range of 100km. If it were more efficient, it would have a longer range.

pc86 9y ago

Wow there are all kinds of strained comparisons here as the other comment mentions. One, comparing one of the most fuel efficient ASEL aircraft compared against one of the least fuel efficient passenger vehicle categories. Nobody uses pickup trucks for taxis. Nobody uses large SUVs unless you specifically request them (and they typically have a surcharge). > Once it is in cruise mode, it is as safe as a regular small aircraft. Well landing and taking off are the two most dangerous phases of flight. "Once you ignore the two most dangerous phases of operation, operation is as safe as you'd expect." Not to mention that small aircraft/general aviation is not safe. Most life insurance excludes it. If you're under 140 hours TT and not instrument rated, life insurance that explicitly includes GA is prohibitively expensive (I received a quote at 80 TT and pre-IR for nearly $300/mo for a 10 year term on an otherwise healthy 30 year old male, comparable policies with a GA exclusion are $10-12/mo). The most optimistic figures put GA roughly on par with riding a motorcycle without a helmet. > An easy target for making these at scale would be $500,000 per aircraft. Look up the cost of a new Diamond DA-20 or Robinson R44. There is no way you can build one of these things for less than $750k+ at cost so you're going to need to sell them at 1.5-2x that or more. And that's at scale. And speaking of scale, what do you think the market for these things is? You're not going to be selling millions of them. Cessna sells a shitload of planes compared to the rest of the industry and they sell one factory new plane a week, almost exclusively to large institutional flight schools. > Operating costs at scale, max $100/hr I know "lol" is code for "I breathed through my nose a little louder," but this actually did make me laugh. Operating costs will be the 2-3 times this at scale. And 5x+ now. I fly a single-engine plane with over 30,000 units in production (PA-28-181). They're everywhere. The lower HP version is a very popular trainer aircraft, and as such need to have low costs of ownership and maintenance, and high reliability. I fly this plane as part of a non-profit club and still pay $100/mo and $100/hr to fly a 45 year old plane with no autopilot, steam gauges and a carbureted engine.

nickbauman 9y ago

Maybe remove the rose-colored glasses? 1) 15 minutes? If you flew in a small aircraft regularly, you would know it takes 40-60 minutes to prep a plane from park to airborne in zero traffic. 2) Estimating what the fuel consumption of a small aircraft will be is much, much harder than a surface vehicle. Consider 90% private aviation disasters are a result of pilot error. And 90% of pilot error is in fuel consumption estimation.

danielvf 9y ago
That fifteen minutes is for flying time in air taxi service. So you get into an aircraft ready to fly. I'm guessing two minutes of liftoff/landing and transitional flight on either end, and 11 minutes/22 miles of cruise in between.
cbr 9y ago
15 minutes? If you flew in a small aircraft regularly, you would know it takes 40-60 minutes to prep a plane from park to airborne in zero traffic How much of that prep is eliminated by going full automation? Isn't most of the prep the pilot running through a checklist? If there is unavoidable time consuming checking, you could do that in advance and provide the plane as an autonomous taxi. So it shows up, picks you up, drops you off.
- knodi123 9y ago
  > Isn't most of the prep the pilot running through a checklist Yes, but... Things like "check your propeller for cracks", or "verify that the control surfaces are actually moving when the controls say they should have moved" should not be skipped. But you can skip a lot of things just by virtue of this being an electric vehicle - like "visually verify fuel level without using the gauge", or "check oil level", or "test carb heat" or "verify dual magnetos" etc.
  - cbr 9y ago
    If these are automated, though, they can be done in parallel. A camera pointed at the propellers can be checking them for cracks at the same time that another camera is checking that control surfaces actually move.

markab21 9y ago

Not to be overly nit-picky, you obviously know ASEL referencing the Cirrus but maybe I can add a little more of my own experience. I own a Cirrus SR20, and I'm lucky at cruise to get more than 12-14mpg running 8.5gph lean of peak at altitude. I just recently flew a NA SR22 up to Philadelphia from Tampa and averaged about 12mpg. You might hit those numbers you mentioned in a turbo at flight levels, but not low, and certainly without a tailwind. The operating costs for my SR20 with all things taken into account: Oil, Hangar Costs, annual inspection and averaged annual repairs, engine overhaul allowance are close to being conservative $160/hr fuel included vs. about $70 about it being fuel alone. From my calculations, if I went with a NA SR22, I'd be closer to $200/hr for a non-turbo, and about $260 for a SR22T. Keep in mind, those hourly costs don't take into account the capital costs, depreciation and other training expenses required to operate the vehicle. It's hard to compare costs of a vehicle to an aircraft. To drive to the airport, pre-flight the plane.. file a flight plan and deal with being re-routed the terminal area trying to get into a busy airport often undermine the time savings of just driving, unless i'm flying out of the state. I don't fly because it's convenient or faster. I do it because the feeling of watching the earth drift away from you when the plane is leaving the runway never gets old. I love flying. :)

danielvf 9y ago
Thanks for some real numbers!

starpilot 9y ago

The performance of this aircraft is piss poor. Why compare it to as SR22? Let's try an R22. R22 Range 240 miles Speed 110 mph Price $250k Cora Range 60 miles (1/4 that of the R22, 1/20th of the SR22) Speed 93 mph (half that of the SR22) Price ??? This thing is a dog. Cool design, I think it has promise, but let's not pretend this is in any way more than a concept being shoehorned into a niche commercial application.

baybal2 9y ago

It would be happy if they had anybody of who has some semblance of an aircraft design engineer background. Their first try: zee aero made a barely flyable contraption that was nuked by American FAA, and rightfully so. http://wap.business-standard.com/article-amp/international/larry-page-is-secretly-investing-millions-to-build-flying-cars-116061000001_1.html http://wap.business-standard.com/article-amp/international/l... This time, I don't see this being much better. My early childhood aspiration was aeronautics. I believe as somebody who built a semiflyable motoglider as a 15 years old in 2006, I can comment on technical soundness of this. Biggest red flag in the design are fans in front of the wing. Turbulence from them will be randomly stalling the wing, and most likely asymmetrically - which leads to a corkscrewing risk, especially with that huge elevator.