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Why now? (Or why soon)? Or why might flying cars actually happen this time? The enabling tech is battery density. Battery density (per kg) has been increasing
by joshe 8y ago
Why now? (Or why soon)? Or why might flying cars actually happen this time?
The enabling tech is battery density. Battery density (per kg) has been increasing 5-8% a year (doubling every 10 years). That seems slow compared to transistors (doubling every 2 years), but compound growth sneaks up on you. Enough that an electric car seemed dumb 20 years ago and obvious now.
Urban human quadcopters are unlikely, a car like number of these in cities is hard to imagine. Even with silent electric motors, the noise from take off and landing from air displacement exceeds safe noise levels, and is far above nuisance levels. So I'd guess 2-30 times as much traffic as current helicopters. Also they can and will fall down on expensive stuff and nice people.
The more plausible market is medium range 4 person air taxis, from small airport to small airport, 50 to 400 miles. That's NYC to Boston, SF to LA, Portland to Seattle.
This Boeing story says 50 miles. Pipistrel's Alpha Electro, a 2 seater plane, has a 93 mile range with another 45 miles as reserve (138 total).
In 2029 with similar battery improvement, that will be 231 miles with 45 miles in reserve. The regulatory challenges will be difficult, but in about 2025 you could launch a viable autonomous air taxi company somewhere in the world.
Existing advantages:
- Drone autonomy is already or easily solved, so you don't pay for a pilot.
- Electricity cost is low.
- Maintenance costs are much lower than gas engine planes.
- Even with maintenance, gas engines are less reliable.
Better battery tech unlocks these last three advantages and makes air taxies feasible.
[1] https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2015/october/pilot/f_pipistrel https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2015/october/pi...
- bitxbitxbitcoin 8y agoYou just made me more excited for the next decade :).
- joshe 8y agoWhat a terrific compliment. Thank you!
- Cacti 8y agoYou're assuming that the market is retail consumers. But this same tech is what allows you to purpose these vehicles, and vehicles like them, for things like emergency courier services, for remote rescue, for military uses like exfiltration and so on. The future is not one where there are tens of thousands of flying cars over every city, but there are plenty of edge cases where having a few would be wildly beneficial.
- jandrese 8y agoThe future is flying Uber for the 1% crowd.
- stickfigure 8y agoYou say this like it's a bad thing. Automobiles, televisions, VCRs, computers, flush toilets, electric lighting... all started out as wildly expensive luxuries for the super rich. Then they got cheaper.
- bhupy 8y agoEven regular commercial flying was an endeavor exclusively for the rich. Now it's a commodity that's affordable to most.
- jandrese 8y agoI'll be buying that mass production 30 foot yacht any day now...
- stcredzero 8y agoYou can go out today and very easily buy a much smaller mass production sailboat. That would have been a pipe dream many years ago.
- stickfigure 8y agoYou don't even have to go smaller! If you're willing to buy used, a 30' yacht in good shape can be had for $10-$20k. Less, if you're willing to put a little work in. If you can afford $500/mo in slip fees, you can probably afford the boat. I know people with boats in Santa Cruz that live on extremely modest incomes.
- kakwa_ 8y agoSo basically, it's a cheaper helicopter? Don't get me wrong, if safe enough and cheaper, it could open new usages, hopefully beyond "now, this 'big project manager' can also take it, it's not anymore reserved to the CEO". Usages like medical emergencies could actually be really useful. But it's hardly a progress for the masses and a solution to traffic congestion.
- dotancohen 8y ago5% yearly growth would be a doubling every 14 years, not every 10.
- joshe 8y agoGood point, it's really 5-8% a year, historically it did double in 10 years, which is at 7% growth. I edited the original.
- syn0byte 8y agoTransistor progress is still a major if not the primary factor. The power requirements have gone down while battery density went up. Try running an Osborne 1 on a modern laptop battery for example.
- stcredzero 8y agoEven with silent electric motors, the noise from take off and landing from air displacement exceeds safe noise levels, and is far above nuisance levels. I would have fast airships with high speed winches hovering over the pads, with the ends of the cables managed by smaller drones. This would enable the passenger drones to take off assisted, with their motors only providing control forces, until they reach an altitude where their noise at full power isn't such a nuisance.