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This is within the price range of a flying car (or to be clear, a flying coffin; it's pretty tight in there, and I doubt the safety). I'd like a flying car!
by gibba999 5y ago
This is within the price range of a flying car (or to be clear, a flying coffin; it's pretty tight in there, and I doubt the safety).
I'd like a flying car!
- ceejayoz 5y agoI’m a little skeptical of the claimed vertical take off capacity given the photos.
- Arnt 5y agoThis drone looks similar and its manufacturer also claims VTOL and many hours' flight time: https://carbonix.com.au/ https://carbonix.com.au/
- snovv_crash 5y agoI think it's the total capacity that it carried over several flights. The journalist mixed the numbers up.
- gibba999 5y agoI don't need VToL. I need <30mph short runway take-off and landing, which is a lot easier.
- ben_w 5y agoEvery time someone mentions flying cars, I wonder what they have in mind that a helicopter isn’t the answer to. I remember helicopters for sale in Farnborough Air Show, probably 30 years ago now, the cheapest there cost about £100k. I assume inflation has quadrupled that, but I don’t follow that market and the stuff on eBay I am unqualified to gauge the quality of.
- neverminder 5y agoHelicopters never really "took off" so to speak, because apparently for every 1 hour of flight they need 4 hours of maintenance, amongst other issues.
- _wolfie_ 5y agoI've never understood why flying cars should have lower needs for maintainence.
- dividedbyzero 5y agoMy understanding is that a "flying car" is pretty much just a lower-maintenance, easier-to-use, safer and less noisy helicopter. Any helicopter that doesn't have these properties wouldn't work as a flying car, but once (if) someone figures out how to do it, I guess it'll become a feature of other helicopter designs as well.
- Retric 5y agoMass production allows for more optimization than small production runs. Modern cars can go a long time with minimal maintenance, but it took a lot of R&D to reach that point. The most successful small aircraft the Cessna 172 Skyhawk has averaged than 1,000 produced per year and runs ~400,000$ new. They could easily drop that to under 100k with modest levels of automation, but can’t justify automation with current levels of demand. Similarly only minimal levels of R&D is worth is at when the market is tiny. It’s even worse in the Helicopter market. Presumably someone designing a flying car is going to take the R&D and automation risks assuming they will pay for themselves.
- bluedino 5y agoI'd hate to see the amount of paperwork the FAA would require if you automated a Cessna production line.
- jsight 5y agoWith enough demand to produce 100k units per year, that would amortize well too. But light aircraft are a hard thing to sell for really practical reasons. They have a lot of real world limitations for small overall improvements in performance vs ground travel. This might be different for some air taxi services within metropolitan areas.
- gibba999 5y agoRunning costs. I want to get point A to point B cheaply, in terms of both fuel and maintenance. Helicopters won't do that.