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You'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 em
by Cacti 8y ago
You'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.
- joshe 8y agoThe helicopter market is small, about $30 billion a year sales in the US. GM had $111 billion dollar in sales. Tesla, which is still small, has $12 billion in sales. Total aircraft manufacturing sales in the US is $240 billion. [1] Passenger airlines (like Southwest Airlines, not manufacturing) are at $175 billion in sales, something like air taxis would be very competitive in that market, and probably increase the market too. A consumer market of $175-415 billion (upper end is domestic manufacturing + passenger airlines)[1] is a good place to start a big huge Apple / Uber / Tesla sized company. Those are market caps of $700B / $72B / $50B respectively. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerospace_manufacturer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerospace_manufacturer