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Uber’s Flying Taxi
- ukulele 8y ago> Use that expertise to build a tilt-rotor commercial plane. They have, it's called the AW609. And like its predecessor V-22, it has crashed and killed the occupants early on and is nowhere near commercial readiness. Uber's estimates of commercial VTOL flight on an untested airframe by 2023 is total garbage, and they have to know it. The US military has sunk $50 Billion dollars into this problem over the last 30 years and still aren't there. My guess is that Uber simply wants to maintain some hope of future growth, particularly with their autonomous car program in shambles. PS I sincerely hope I'm wrong.
- debatem1 8y agoCame here to say exactly this. I'd add that of the non-aerospace tech companies that have tried to build planes, I'm not aware of any that have launched commercially and I can only think of one that has ever flown. Turns out that building commercial aircraft is still hard.
- trhway 8y agomaking flying things is easy these days https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQK9m_OBVgY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQK9m_OBVgY >The US military has sunk $50 Billion dollars into this problem over the last 30 years and still aren't there. Bell X22 ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arXpHn9DPYo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arXpHn9DPYo ) was technically pretty successful from the start. The only disadvantage vs. V-22 is the speed - that speed though comes at the cost of lesser stability and safety and higher complexity of V-22. For commercial application the priorities would be different, and thus i think the multirotor, being more easy to develop, would come cheaper and sooner than that while any commercialization of V-22 is doomed from the start.
- dogma1138 8y agoThe X-22 was in no way more stable or safer than the V-22 it had just as much problems at start and unlike the V-22 which was based on the XV-3 and XV-15 those problems were not mainly in manufacturing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_XV-3 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_XV-3
- chburger 8y agoHaha, yes. Glad you said this. I don't know the exact requirement on FAA approving a new airplane / VTOL whatever, but I do know it takes a lot of time... Same reason I thought the supersonic company was a bit ambitious on their timeframe as well.
- jdgilbert21 8y agoDevelopment of a new airplane takes a long time. Trying to certify a plane by similarity usually takes 4-5 years, clean sheet design would take even longer. Dassault's Falcon 6X (largely derived off the 5X that was cancelled due to design issues from the engine supplier Safran) was only just announced and isn't scheduled to go on sale until 2022, and a good portion of its design work has already been completed.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> The US military has sunk $50 Billion dollars into this problem over the last 30 years and still aren't there. And that's not the whole cost and time; they've been working on tiltrotors since the 1940s.
- mtgx 8y agoUber's new slogan: We can kill you on the ground, we can kill you in the air. It sounds like the typical corner-cutting Uber.
- dsr_ 8y agoSarcastic humor, but the fact of the matter is that Uber has a history of ignoring inconvenient laws, and the FAA really doesn't approve of "move fast and break things" in their jurisdiction.
- melkiaur 8y ago> My guess is that Uber simply wants to maintain some hope of future growth, particularly with their autonomous car program in shambles. They also benefit from future free advertising. Everytime you'll see a bit of news talking about autonomous drones, flying taxis, or the like, you can bet that the writer will mention Uber, thus giving them free Brand recognition. The same happened with Amazon's delivery drones, or Uber self driving cabs.
- paulific 8y agoI missread that as "self driving crabs" and now I want to see that. :-)
- ben_w 8y agoYou jest, but cybernetic implants to remote control cockroaches and flying beetles is a thing, and even normal people can buy the former (RoboRoach Bundle is about US$160), so I wouldn’t be very surprised if someone makes a crab-based delivery cyborg.
- stefanpl 8y agoWow. That's actually mind blowing... I never would have thought that neural interfacing could be so cheap and affordable
- taneq 8y ago
- robkop 8y agoBell is also currently working on the V-280 Valor which is more of a direct successor to the V-22. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_V-280_Valor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_V-280_Valor
- opencl 8y agoNot only is it an untested VTOL airframe that'll be commercially available in 5 years, it's an electric plane that will have 60 mile range and 5 minute recharge time. I'm shocked that the articles writing about this thing take all these ridiculous claims at face value.
- jryle80 8y ago> The US military has sunk $50 Billion dollars into this problem over the last 30 years and still aren't there. I suppose by "this problem" you referred to tilt-rotor technology. If so V-22 is combat ready, and has been deployed since 2007. Not sure what "still aren't there" means. The next generation, Bell V-280 is in active development and already made the first flight [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_V-280_Valor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_V-280_Valor
- sschueller 8y agoThe V-22 also known as the "elevator of death" [1] [1] https://medium.com/war-is-boring/your-periodic-reminder-that-the-v-22-is-a-piece-of-junk-db72a8a23ccf https://medium.com/war-is-boring/your-periodic-reminder-that...
- robkop 8y agoWorth noting that after the initial problems the V-22 turned into the safest rotorcraft that the marines have to offer. [1] http://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/v-22-is-the-safest-most-survivable-rotorcraft-the-marines-have/ http://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/v-22-is-the-safest-most-su...
- nickspacek 8y agoAlso worth noting is that a bit of searching found this connection between Boeing and Lexington Institute: https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/lexington-institutes-weak-defense-boeings-bank-veronique-de-rugy/ https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/lexington-institutes-w... "The Lexington Institute, in fact, is the one receiving money from a narrow corporate interest — Boeing." EDIT: The only reason I looked for this connection was beacause the GP article was nicely written, long, and detailed, while the Lexington Institute seemed fluffy.
- hndamien 8y agoMy guess is that there would be no pilots. Given they are attempting to get rid of drivers, getting rid of pilots in VTOL seems like an easier proposition with a large added weight advantage.
- arijun 8y agoYeah kind of weird that the article didn't even consider it. It seems like a non-starter with a pilot.
- jdgilbert21 8y agoI think fully autonomous flight is a solution, but I also think it's further away than people imagine. For airplanes at least, the trickiest segments of flight are takeoffs and landings and even with today's advanced avionics suites, pilots are still in control for those portions of flight. The other big factor is the passengers. Even if technology for fully autonomous passenger flight is available in the next 10 years, I don't think people will trust planes flying themselves.
- taneq 8y agoDJI drones have been able to navigate back to their takeoff point and land automatically for a while now. Landing's much easier for a multicopter than for a fixed wing aircraft.
- tartuffe78 8y agoOurs went haywire and crashed into a pond onetime when we used the Return to Home feature. YMMV
- taneq 8y agoI didn't say I'd ride on one personally. :P Just that the basics are solved, and reliability is a Simple Matter Of Engineering.
- hndamien 8y ago
- Mashimo 8y ago> A private pilot’s license takes a minimum of 40 hours of flying time Wow, you can get a pilot's license that quick? In Germany you need 30h of driving just to get a regular car license. No large trailer or truck.
- lejar 8y agoYou still need to spend a lot of time in theory, and especially in Germany you need your radio certificates in English and German (which themselves take a long time). After that, you can only fly a very limited subset of aircraft during the day under a certain altitude (and possibly certain weather conditions?). If you want to fly at night you need to get a certification for instrument flying.
- gbacon 8y agoIn the U.S., a private pilot may fly at night with no additional training or rating.
- gbacon 8y agoYes, that is the minimum number of required flight hours, but a Certificated Flight Instructor (CFI) must endorse a student pilot to take the practical test or checkride. A CFI’s certificate renews automatically if 80% of the people (and at least five of them) she endorses over a two-year period pass the checkride on the first attempt. I have heard the U.S. average for number of flight hours logged prior to taking the private checkride is about 70. I know a couple of people who passed the forty hours total time (TT) mark on the flight to go meet the Designated Pilot Examiner (DPE) to take the checkride!
- bufferoverflow 8y agoThat's for a lightweight plane that costs a lot less than your car/truck. Getting to fly a huge Boeing/Airbus takes years.
- akavel 8y ago"[Uber's] electrically powered [concept aircraft] with two rotors for vertical flight and one for horizontal flight [...] is reminiscent of the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor, where the propellers transition from vertical flight to horizontal – the difference being Uber’s rotors are fixed." Whut the funk??!? How is this in any way similar??? Uh, correct me if I don't see something, but to me this is like saying something like: "Tesla Model 3 is similar to the Caterpillar CS-533E drum roller [1] — the difference being Tesla has 4 wheels"... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caterpillar_CS-533E https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caterpillar_CS-533E I'm in no way an aircraft person, but if I were to try to look for similarities to something, the following are more like what I'd think of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrodyne https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrodyne https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autogyro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autogyro
- TrickyRick 8y agoSimilar in the sense that they have the same manufacturer I guess so there might be some shared tech. But other than that I agree with you, the Osprey is a tiltrotor aircraft whereas the Uber aircraft is not. Like you say it's more of an Autogyro.
- evgen 8y agoI think the main difference here is that in the Autogyro and Gyrodyne the rotor is basically acting as a wing (either through autorotation for the Autogyro or the application of limited power for the Gyrodyne) while everything I have seen of the Uber fantasy and similar drone scale-ups uses powered rotors for most of the vertical lift.
- god_bless_texas 8y agooh hell no. What's the glideslope of a multirotor vehicle?
- jdgilbert21 8y agoThat's a running joke in the aviation industry - Zero.
- evgen 8y agoThey do not fly so much as... plummet...
- taneq 8y agoWhatever it wants, if it's using sufficiently redundant systems.
- theothermkn 8y agoThe article reads like machine- or cocaine-generated slop. There doesn't seem to be a single credible assertion in it. It has literally no point, as the author openly admits near the end of the article ("just my thoughts"), just before he closes by asking us to read his profound insights into why flying things shouldn't be heavy. This prose would receive a failing grade in a high school composition class. I'm trying to resist the "Why is this on HN?" question, but can't. This is appalling dreck and doesn't belong here.
- reaperducer 8y agoWill this thing try to navigate as well as Uber's car-based navigation that occasionally tells its drivers in Las Vegas that the best route from the airport to The Bellagio is through the lobby of the MGM?
- joshuaheard 8y agoWhy not a full-size multi-rotor automated drone that can carry 4 people and luggage?
- dsr_ 8y agoThe answer to questions like these is almost always "power density and safety".