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To me this marketing just looks like a slightly less expensive helicopter. It's great that we can travel to our ski trips or vacations a bit faster but it's not

To me this marketing just looks like a slightly less expensive helicopter. It's great that we can travel to our ski trips or vacations a bit faster but it's not going impact the mobility needs of 95% of people. Why isn't anyone working on improving commutes through dense cityscapes? It's obviously a much harder problem but it's also a more important one.

pdelbarba 6y ago
I absolutely guarantee this will be anything but less expensive. You can get an R44 with better range and payload for a couple hundred thousand. This will be an electronic nightmare requiring extensive certification and maintenance efforts. Cessna can't even sell ridiculously old designs for reasonable prices due to certification overhead.
- kart23 6y ago
  The operating cost per hour of an r44, according to some quick googling, is $190. The cost after ownership is too high, and probably the reason that everyone still has cars instead of helicopters in their garage. Reliability and maintenance will be the most important thing here and will determine their success. And that's notoriously tough in the aviation market. https://www.aneclecticmind.com/2010/12/28/the-real-cost-of-helicopter-ownership/ https://www.aneclecticmind.com/2010/12/28/the-real-cost-of-h...
- nlawalker 6y ago
  Yeah, what I'm not clear on is: what's the cost to fly from SF to Lake Tahoe in a helicopter? If it's a lot more than the $250 that Lilium is promising, what is it that makes Lilium cheaper? Is it just the up-front investment in scale and the route network?
  - looping__lui 6y ago
    Unrealistic business plan estimations not factoring in the true costs of operating an aerial vehicle... It’s a bit like “soon to be plane owners” that don’t quite pay attention when they are told the spark plug for their Cessna is 50USD, they need 8 for 4 cylinders and replace them rather frequently ;-) Changes when they realize that those companies chartering out planes for less than 200 USD/h probably don’t make loads of cash but just keep track of actual expenses, have a high utilization and capable maintenance staff...
    - wahern 6y ago
      > It’s a bit like “soon to be plane owners” that don’t quite pay attention when they are told the spark plug for their Cessna is 50USD, they need 8 for 4 cylinders and replace them rather frequently ;-) That's supposed to be the promise of electric aircraft: almost all serviceable parts go out the window, just as with electric cars. Construction and maintenance costs are reduced to a fraction of what they are for mechanical systems. And because these are VTOL, ground expenses are likewise reduced. Batteries are still rather expensive, though, and energy density sucks. The advantages may not be able to compensate, at least not sufficiently to hit a price point that appeals to a wider, non-millionaire market.
      - AtlasBarfed 6y ago
        Some israeli startup is doing replaceable aluminum air batteries. Also there are probably low-cycle solid state lithium designs that can start to approach the needed density, it would take a really good recycling loop though.
      - looping__lui 6y ago
        Ok, the only certified batteries you can install in a Cessna is like 500 USD and it literally dies after 2 years of (not heavy) usage. It’s worse and less sophisticated that your 50 USD car battery. I don’t want to sound like an aviation cynic, but for pilots (even in the non-commercial sector) spending 50 USD for a spark plug or 500 USD for a battery is “normal”. Tiny bit of innovation and disruption = very very expensive in aviation.
  - pdelbarba 6y ago
    For an owner operator, an R22 and maybe an R44 would be able to do SF to Lake Tahoe for well under $250. For a charter service you could probably get a commercial operator to do it for maybe around ~$500 and there are definitely some inefficiencies you could remove there. Lilium is on crack if they actually think $250 is going to be the all in cost for a private flight though. You don't just spin up a new air frame and 135 operation and make money at those numbers...unless you pull an Uber on steroids and open the VC floodgates...
    - nradov 6y ago
      The R44 has a tiny cargo capacity. It's not really viable for a family of 4 that want to bring skis with them.
  - asdfadsfgfdda 6y ago
    A medium helicopter charter might be $1200/hour, SF to Tahoe is ~130 nm, so ~1.5 hours each way. Of that $1200/hr, $150/hr is fuel, $50/hr is engine maintenance, and maybe $100/hr airframe maintenance. These scale linearly with time. For fixed costs, a new helicopter is ~$3 million, so figure $300k per year in depreciation, taxes, insurance, and finance costs. Add another $150k/year for pilot salary and training. If you find lots of customers and keep the helicopter busy, say 1000 hours a year, there's $450 an hour for fixed costs. The real key to reducing costs is increasing utilization, this keeps the fixed costs reasonable. Batteries and motor will likely improve fuel+engine cost, but also hurt utilization because charging takes more time than refueling. A large network improves utilization. But building a network, with various types of demand (leisure on weekends, business commute during weekdays, cargo during off-peak periods?), is the real challenge.
- getpost 6y ago
  It might be less expensive due to the electrical powerplant. It will take a while before there is enough of a track record to know for sure. But, for example, electric cars are much lower maintenance than gas cars, as Tesloop as shown. https://cleantechnica.com/2017/09/05/10492-tesla-model-s-maintenance-charging-costs-300000-miles/ https://cleantechnica.com/2017/09/05/10492-tesla-model-s-mai... https://www.tesloop.com/blog/2018/7/16/tesloops-tesla-model-s-surpasses-400000-miles-643737-kilometers https://www.tesloop.com/blog/2018/7/16/tesloops-tesla-model-...
  - nradov 6y ago
    Tesla vehicles actually require much more frequent repairs than similar gas cars. https://www.truedelta.com/Tesla-Model-S/repair-frequencies-1095,2012-2018 https://www.truedelta.com/Tesla-Model-S/repair-frequencies-1...
  - Marsymars 6y ago
    Disregarding that they have a lot of free "Goodwill" replacements - their post-warranty maintenance costs are about $0.17/km - my ICE Ford is at $0.09/km over the past seven years post-warranty. (And I think I've included more items in my spreadsheet, since I've got the cost of things like windshield wipers and fob batteries, which they omit.) edit: I thought looking at entire lifespan of the Tesla might be unfair since that includes a much longer period when it's significantly higher mileage than my car, but taking only an equivalent post-warranty period is even worse, it's about $0.24/km in maintenance over that time frame.
techsupporter 6y ago
> Why isn't anyone working on improving commutes through dense cityscapes? As someone who's been on and off involved in moving-people-technology, it's two-fold: it's "in the physical world" so you have all of the attendant problems (objections from people around the proposed construction, overlapping government bodies, cost, and that "the real world" isn't "sexy" for investment). And second, if you make something that's very efficient but looks too much like public transport, there's a whole market of people, at least in North America, who simply won't ride it. Where I live, I had several coworkers who lived next to a bus route or train line that went directly to our offices and they'd still pay for a daily Uber.
- noir_lord 6y ago
  Integrated light rail/subways that are well designed and well run are pretty much the best mass transport solution we've come up with. The tricky part is the well designed and well run part and as you alluded to they run into a lot of real world issues during construction. They also really need to be state run at break-even or even subsidized since the benefit is the general increase in economic productivity across the whole region rather than an opportunity to make a lot of money. So politically they don't really fly in the US.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
qppo 6y ago
> Why isn't anyone working on improving commutes through dense cityscapes? Uber, Lyft, Musk's Boring Company, and all their variants... there are tons of people working on improving commutes. But IMO there isn't a technical problem to solve. It's social and political. We shouldn't be asking about improving commuting, but reducing its necessity and distance.

pdelbarba 6y ago

I absolutely guarantee this will be anything but less expensive. You can get an R44 with better range and payload for a couple hundred thousand. This will be an electronic nightmare requiring extensive certification and maintenance efforts. Cessna can't even sell ridiculously old designs for reasonable prices due to certification overhead.

kart23 6y ago
The operating cost per hour of an r44, according to some quick googling, is $190. The cost after ownership is too high, and probably the reason that everyone still has cars instead of helicopters in their garage. Reliability and maintenance will be the most important thing here and will determine their success. And that's notoriously tough in the aviation market. https://www.aneclecticmind.com/2010/12/28/the-real-cost-of-helicopter-ownership/ https://www.aneclecticmind.com/2010/12/28/the-real-cost-of-h...
nlawalker 6y ago
Yeah, what I'm not clear on is: what's the cost to fly from SF to Lake Tahoe in a helicopter? If it's a lot more than the $250 that Lilium is promising, what is it that makes Lilium cheaper? Is it just the up-front investment in scale and the route network?
- looping__lui 6y ago
  Unrealistic business plan estimations not factoring in the true costs of operating an aerial vehicle... It’s a bit like “soon to be plane owners” that don’t quite pay attention when they are told the spark plug for their Cessna is 50USD, they need 8 for 4 cylinders and replace them rather frequently ;-) Changes when they realize that those companies chartering out planes for less than 200 USD/h probably don’t make loads of cash but just keep track of actual expenses, have a high utilization and capable maintenance staff...
  - wahern 6y ago
    > It’s a bit like “soon to be plane owners” that don’t quite pay attention when they are told the spark plug for their Cessna is 50USD, they need 8 for 4 cylinders and replace them rather frequently ;-) That's supposed to be the promise of electric aircraft: almost all serviceable parts go out the window, just as with electric cars. Construction and maintenance costs are reduced to a fraction of what they are for mechanical systems. And because these are VTOL, ground expenses are likewise reduced. Batteries are still rather expensive, though, and energy density sucks. The advantages may not be able to compensate, at least not sufficiently to hit a price point that appeals to a wider, non-millionaire market.
    - AtlasBarfed 6y ago
      Some israeli startup is doing replaceable aluminum air batteries. Also there are probably low-cycle solid state lithium designs that can start to approach the needed density, it would take a really good recycling loop though.
    - looping__lui 6y ago
      Ok, the only certified batteries you can install in a Cessna is like 500 USD and it literally dies after 2 years of (not heavy) usage. It’s worse and less sophisticated that your 50 USD car battery. I don’t want to sound like an aviation cynic, but for pilots (even in the non-commercial sector) spending 50 USD for a spark plug or 500 USD for a battery is “normal”. Tiny bit of innovation and disruption = very very expensive in aviation.
- pdelbarba 6y ago
  For an owner operator, an R22 and maybe an R44 would be able to do SF to Lake Tahoe for well under $250. For a charter service you could probably get a commercial operator to do it for maybe around ~$500 and there are definitely some inefficiencies you could remove there. Lilium is on crack if they actually think $250 is going to be the all in cost for a private flight though. You don't just spin up a new air frame and 135 operation and make money at those numbers...unless you pull an Uber on steroids and open the VC floodgates...
  - nradov 6y ago
    The R44 has a tiny cargo capacity. It's not really viable for a family of 4 that want to bring skis with them.
- asdfadsfgfdda 6y ago
  A medium helicopter charter might be $1200/hour, SF to Tahoe is ~130 nm, so ~1.5 hours each way. Of that $1200/hr, $150/hr is fuel, $50/hr is engine maintenance, and maybe $100/hr airframe maintenance. These scale linearly with time. For fixed costs, a new helicopter is ~$3 million, so figure $300k per year in depreciation, taxes, insurance, and finance costs. Add another $150k/year for pilot salary and training. If you find lots of customers and keep the helicopter busy, say 1000 hours a year, there's $450 an hour for fixed costs. The real key to reducing costs is increasing utilization, this keeps the fixed costs reasonable. Batteries and motor will likely improve fuel+engine cost, but also hurt utilization because charging takes more time than refueling. A large network improves utilization. But building a network, with various types of demand (leisure on weekends, business commute during weekdays, cargo during off-peak periods?), is the real challenge.
getpost 6y ago
It might be less expensive due to the electrical powerplant. It will take a while before there is enough of a track record to know for sure. But, for example, electric cars are much lower maintenance than gas cars, as Tesloop as shown. https://cleantechnica.com/2017/09/05/10492-tesla-model-s-maintenance-charging-costs-300000-miles/ https://cleantechnica.com/2017/09/05/10492-tesla-model-s-mai... https://www.tesloop.com/blog/2018/7/16/tesloops-tesla-model-s-surpasses-400000-miles-643737-kilometers https://www.tesloop.com/blog/2018/7/16/tesloops-tesla-model-...
- nradov 6y ago
  Tesla vehicles actually require much more frequent repairs than similar gas cars. https://www.truedelta.com/Tesla-Model-S/repair-frequencies-1095,2012-2018 https://www.truedelta.com/Tesla-Model-S/repair-frequencies-1...
- Marsymars 6y ago
  Disregarding that they have a lot of free "Goodwill" replacements - their post-warranty maintenance costs are about $0.17/km - my ICE Ford is at $0.09/km over the past seven years post-warranty. (And I think I've included more items in my spreadsheet, since I've got the cost of things like windshield wipers and fob batteries, which they omit.) edit: I thought looking at entire lifespan of the Tesla might be unfair since that includes a much longer period when it's significantly higher mileage than my car, but taking only an equivalent post-warranty period is even worse, it's about $0.24/km in maintenance over that time frame.

techsupporter 6y ago

> Why isn't anyone working on improving commutes through dense cityscapes? As someone who's been on and off involved in moving-people-technology, it's two-fold: it's "in the physical world" so you have all of the attendant problems (objections from people around the proposed construction, overlapping government bodies, cost, and that "the real world" isn't "sexy" for investment). And second, if you make something that's very efficient but looks too much like public transport, there's a whole market of people, at least in North America, who simply won't ride it. Where I live, I had several coworkers who lived next to a bus route or train line that went directly to our offices and they'd still pay for a daily Uber.

noir_lord 6y ago
Integrated light rail/subways that are well designed and well run are pretty much the best mass transport solution we've come up with. The tricky part is the well designed and well run part and as you alluded to they run into a lot of real world issues during construction. They also really need to be state run at break-even or even subsidized since the benefit is the general increase in economic productivity across the whole region rather than an opportunity to make a lot of money. So politically they don't really fly in the US.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

qppo 6y ago

> Why isn't anyone working on improving commutes through dense cityscapes? Uber, Lyft, Musk's Boring Company, and all their variants... there are tons of people working on improving commutes. But IMO there isn't a technical problem to solve. It's social and political. We shouldn't be asking about improving commuting, but reducing its necessity and distance.