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I guess the article is actually about taxis specifically, but if the technology exists, they could definitely be sold as personal vehicles for travel along path

I guess the article is actually about taxis specifically, but if the technology exists, they could definitely be sold as personal vehicles for travel along paths that are very long by road, but very short by air. Making rural less... rural, if that makes sense. The market is probably there if someone could pull off a 1-2 seat VTOL that had maybe a 60 mile range.

gambiting 7y ago
I can't see such a vehicle being any cheaper or requiring fewer licences to operate than a helicopter. And helicopters are already available if travelling 20-30 miles in a straight line is a problem you need to fix.
- LinuxBender 7y ago
  You may be right, but I don't foresee the pilot being allowed to control the vehicle. I imagine governments creating laws before long that would require all drone type cars to use GPS, take off and land from designated areas and would not permit manual control unless you meet some criteria.
  - gambiting 7y ago
    In which case unfortunately, again, I can only imagine it would be 100x easier to just automate a helicopter rather than make a "flying car"(whatever that means) and then automate it.
- digikata 7y ago
  I don’t know about the legal or other regulatory logistics cost of operating a helicopter, but the physical maintenance requirements for helicopters are likely far far higher than a potential electric vtol vehicle.
  - gambiting 7y ago
    Why? Imagine a vehicle that in practicality performs the exact same job as a helicopter, has the same or actually worse failure modes than helicopters(helicopters can at least autorotate, most proposed "flying cars" can neither glide nor autorotate) and now tell me why would such a vehicle have any lower maintenance requirements? Sure it might use an electric motor instead of an engine, but surely safety would require the exact same maintenance regimen as an actual helicopter. This is not going to be a car that you can bring for an inspection once per year, pay £30, change some oil, cabin air filter and be done. It's going to be as costly as any other air-worthy machine to own, in which case any kind of comparisons to a personal car are frankly out of the window, and anyone who thinks they could build a business around one could build a business right now using existing machines. That's not to say that innovation shouldn't happen, quite the contrary - but the whole talk of "flying cars" for your Joe Shmoe is just a pipe dream.
    - fiter 7y ago
      I can think of some reasons: (1) redundancy, (2) economies of scale, and (3) changed regulatory regimes.
      - edmundhuber 7y ago
        The flying car designs I've seen have no true redundancies. They look like they would be dangerously unstable if they tried to run on fewer than all motors.
        FabHK 7y ago
        The Volocopter has 18 rotors (fixed, electric motor, with 1 degree of freedom - doesn’t get much simpler) attached to 9 battery packs, and at least 4 can fail (even more when they are “nicely” distributed) and it's still controllable and landable. And they could still throw in a ballistic rescue parachute.
        gambiting 7y ago
        Unless of course the power supply fails, in which case we're back to the point I brought up earlier - you have neither autorotation nor gliding to fall back on, the vehicle just falls out of the sky like a brick - the parachute would help but I'm not sure how feasible that is.
- starpilot 7y ago
  Helicopters are much harder to fly than any of the flying cars in development. To become licensed for one, you're looking at spending around $20,000 in instruction and flying time. That's why so many helo pilots are ex military. Flying cars also put more emphasis on the noise reduction. Both of these priorities give them greatly reduced performance (speed and range) relative to conventional helicopters.
- jessaustin 7y ago
  One imagines a similar middlebrow dismissal lobbed at those flying camera drones that started selling for personal use about ten or fifteen years ago... We already had UAVs; why would anyone think multiple tiny electric rotors were better?
- FabHK 7y ago
  A helicopter is enormously complex mechanically, hard to operate, and either failure prone (piston engine) or expensive (turbine). Sure an electric VTOL could be cheaper to operate.

gambiting 7y ago

I can't see such a vehicle being any cheaper or requiring fewer licences to operate than a helicopter. And helicopters are already available if travelling 20-30 miles in a straight line is a problem you need to fix.

LinuxBender 7y ago
You may be right, but I don't foresee the pilot being allowed to control the vehicle. I imagine governments creating laws before long that would require all drone type cars to use GPS, take off and land from designated areas and would not permit manual control unless you meet some criteria.
- gambiting 7y ago
  In which case unfortunately, again, I can only imagine it would be 100x easier to just automate a helicopter rather than make a "flying car"(whatever that means) and then automate it.
digikata 7y ago
I don’t know about the legal or other regulatory logistics cost of operating a helicopter, but the physical maintenance requirements for helicopters are likely far far higher than a potential electric vtol vehicle.
- gambiting 7y ago
  Why? Imagine a vehicle that in practicality performs the exact same job as a helicopter, has the same or actually worse failure modes than helicopters(helicopters can at least autorotate, most proposed "flying cars" can neither glide nor autorotate) and now tell me why would such a vehicle have any lower maintenance requirements? Sure it might use an electric motor instead of an engine, but surely safety would require the exact same maintenance regimen as an actual helicopter. This is not going to be a car that you can bring for an inspection once per year, pay £30, change some oil, cabin air filter and be done. It's going to be as costly as any other air-worthy machine to own, in which case any kind of comparisons to a personal car are frankly out of the window, and anyone who thinks they could build a business around one could build a business right now using existing machines. That's not to say that innovation shouldn't happen, quite the contrary - but the whole talk of "flying cars" for your Joe Shmoe is just a pipe dream.
  - fiter 7y ago
    I can think of some reasons: (1) redundancy, (2) economies of scale, and (3) changed regulatory regimes.
    - edmundhuber 7y ago
      The flying car designs I've seen have no true redundancies. They look like they would be dangerously unstable if they tried to run on fewer than all motors.
      - FabHK 7y ago
        The Volocopter has 18 rotors (fixed, electric motor, with 1 degree of freedom - doesn’t get much simpler) attached to 9 battery packs, and at least 4 can fail (even more when they are “nicely” distributed) and it's still controllable and landable. And they could still throw in a ballistic rescue parachute.
        gambiting 7y ago
        Unless of course the power supply fails, in which case we're back to the point I brought up earlier - you have neither autorotation nor gliding to fall back on, the vehicle just falls out of the sky like a brick - the parachute would help but I'm not sure how feasible that is.
starpilot 7y ago
Helicopters are much harder to fly than any of the flying cars in development. To become licensed for one, you're looking at spending around $20,000 in instruction and flying time. That's why so many helo pilots are ex military. Flying cars also put more emphasis on the noise reduction. Both of these priorities give them greatly reduced performance (speed and range) relative to conventional helicopters.
jessaustin 7y ago
One imagines a similar middlebrow dismissal lobbed at those flying camera drones that started selling for personal use about ten or fifteen years ago... We already had UAVs; why would anyone think multiple tiny electric rotors were better?
FabHK 7y ago
A helicopter is enormously complex mechanically, hard to operate, and either failure prone (piston engine) or expensive (turbine). Sure an electric VTOL could be cheaper to operate.