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> Uber says the service is intended to reduce travel times, but when Reuters tried Copter on Wednesday, a trip from its Midtown office to the airport took 70 mi
by sytelus 7y ago
> Uber says the service is intended to reduce travel times, but when Reuters tried Copter on Wednesday, a trip from its Midtown office to the airport took 70 minutes, including a subway ride downtown and two Uber rides to and from the heliport. That’s about the same time it would have taken by regular taxi in moderate traffic.
Helicopters are the beasts - mechanically, operationally and humanly. We need to invest in quad/hexcopter style autonomous point-to-point person-carrying flying vehicles. That could enable ability to fly out from nearly every building roof top with fraction of a cost. The 10-minute flight is also easily achievable with electrical UAVs.
- pininja 7y agoUber Copter is just the beginning.. I’m on the Uber Elevate team developing this. Our primary mission is Electric VTOLs.
- PeterStuer 7y agoDo you ever take pause at the probable environmental hellhole you are helping creating working on this?
- johnisgood 7y agoI, for one, cannot wait for mid-air collisions and parts falling down on residential areas, which is of course just the tip of the iceberg. Seriously, I doubt they care. They probably know about these negative impacts, the risks, etc. but money is money.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- vidarh 7y agoThere are at least half a dozen startups working on different variants. Most seem to be leaning towards electric VTOL planes rather than quad/hexcopter type things. E.g. https://lilium.com https://lilium.com