6 ms·

The amount of money put into these R&D projects is small in the grand scheme of things. The entire eVTOL space is ~$5bn. Compare this with $6.5bn for the replac

The amount of money put into these R&D projects is small in the grand scheme of things. The entire eVTOL space is ~$5bn. Compare this with $6.5bn for the replacement span of the Oakland Bay Bridge or $113bn for California’s non-existent high speed rail.

benj111 4y ago
Ok then. Can we funnel all the marketing, spin and hype towards existing public transport?
- falcor84 4y ago
  Serious question - how would you actually spin and hype something that already exists? It just reminds me of that old soviet-era joke that goes something like this: First grade teacher in Moscow: "Kids, today I want to teach you all about how life is great in the Soviet Union. In the Soviet Union we have the tastiest food, the most fun toys, the most interesting shows ..." Kids: "Oh, teacher, that sounds amazing, can we please go visit the Soviet Union?"
  - benj111 4y ago
    You realise all these new fangled things are old things with a different spin. The boring company makes something worse than the underground. Evtol is basically helicopters, etc.
    - 6510 4y ago
      If there is an hourly train one could say there are 60 moments at which one could chose to travel. In the worse one you've missed it by 0-1 min. It seems reasonable to add the average 30 min to the travel time + margins. One could similarly say there are 60 moments to arrive in an hour. Your appointment could live at the most unfortunate. It seems reasonable to add the average 30 min to the trip again. If the train stops a lot it might be close to accelerating and decelerating most of the time. It seems reasonable to lose half the possible for speed. If it doesn't stop a lot it might take a long time to get to the station. If you need to take 2 trains you might have to wait for the second. Buses and taxis stop far away from the train and traffic is unpredictable. No matter how fast the train is, it can still take a long time to get places. There are countless puzzles left to solve.
      - Grustaf 4y ago
        That is a solved puzzle, public transport is not a new concept, most city dwellers outside of the US rely on it. From the passenger point of view, you simply plan your travel if the train only comes once an hour. Nobody arrives at random to such an infrequent mode of transportation. Once an hour probably means it's intercity travel. From the networks point of view: you constantly monitor travel patterns and optimise frequencies, connections, train lengths etc. With driverless trains the trade-offs are fewer, hence you never need to worry about when the next Copenhagen metro comes.
        oceanplexian 4y ago
        You lost me at “plan your travel”. Logistically, public transportation is awful. You can’t bring any cargo with you, you can’t tow anything, you need to buy an expensive ticket for each person (Even a compact car can fit 5 people), trains don’t turn around if you have a family emergency, and the comfort level of the most advanced trains in Europe and Japan frankly sucks compared to even a mid-level SUV in the most basic trim. Don’t get me wrong, public transportation is an interesting novelty. But for short trips it’s worse than a car, and for long trips it’s inferior to an airplane. There’s a sweet spot where it works if you’re trying to beat commuter traffic but I’d say that’s about it. The people trying to spend billions to build out these networks have an agenda and frankly I’d prefer if we just fixed our roads and airports.
        Grustaf 4y ago
        It’s only a novelty in the US. In other rich countries where people don’t have a car fetish it’s just the most practical and comfortable way to get to work. Obviously if you need to tow something you can’t use the metro, but that’s a very rare need on the whole. Then you take the car, cursing traffic and the parking situation. Here in Copenhagen you’ll often see carpenters and similar with cargo bikes, so it’s not like you always need a huge SUV to move some tools, or indeed children. Cars are almost never the fastest way to get somewhere in a city. Americans love them for cultural reasons, not because it’s practical. Like in poor countries cars are a still a symbol of freedom and wealth in the US, most of the rich world has moved on from that mindset.
    - Grustaf 4y ago
      You are right about Musk's silly tunnels, but VTOL is much better than helicopters. They combine the convenient landing and taking off of helicopters with the fuel economy of fixed wing flight, i.e. airplanes. If it can be made electric then even better.
      - benj111 4y ago
        Where does the fuel economy come from? What design are we talking about?
        Grustaf 4y ago
        Fixed wing aircraft are of course much more efficient than helicopters, so the best combo is really a vtol, that has fixed wings but can land vertically.
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      Helicopters are locked out of many markets by noise and worries about safety of bystanders. The promise of eVTOLs is access to those.
      - benj111 4y ago
        Why are evtols safer than helicopters for bystanders? They both have the spinny blady things. Re noise, most of the sound comes from the rotors rather than the engine. It's not obvious to me that an evtol craft could significantly improve this. There seems to be an assumption that evtol == multiple ducted fans. This isn't necessarily the case. And electric helicopter would be evtol. Any specific design is going to have different tradeoffs. Eg more motors to fail.
      - fomine3 4y ago
        It's really funny that eVTOL solves nothing, but funded
  - nicbou 4y ago
    Not Just Bikes does it well
    - falcor84 4y ago
      I suppose you mean this YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/c/notjustbikes https://www.youtube.com/c/notjustbikes ? It seems that it's hyping the idea of having good public transport, but that doesn't address the chicken-and-egg problem, does it? What I mean is, that most cities seem to have mediocre public transport, and people don't want to use it, so proponents of public transport can't get the budgets to improve it, because there's demonstrably low usage. So how do you use a limited budget to "hype and spin" the existing public transport to prove that your particular city would benefit from higher investment in public transport? The only solution I see is to actually go and set up a new and better route, to prove that your city does in fact have demand for public transport.
      - benj111 4y ago
        I thought it was a pun on spinning.
DoingIsLearning 4y ago
> $113bn for California’s non-existent high speed rail. Those are some serious costs. The cost of the TGV links in France are definitely in the 10s of billions but no 100s of billions. Are you sure those budgets aren't getting eaten by consultants or lawyers doing the impact assessments? Even with higher labour costs that is a pretty steep hike.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  The opportunities for siphoning money to certain factions may be seen as the real purpose of the project, with any actual train more or less incidental. The same may be seen in recent nuclear power projects, urban tunnels, NASA's SLS rocket, and numerous military procurements, F-35 prominent among them. Actual completion of a project means the money spigot is turned off, which nobody involved wants ever to happen. But sometimes an end is inevitable, and if foreseen, actual delivery of a product might be effected, to save face, as for the case of Finland's nuke.
  - rightbyte 4y ago
    Ye you need to be hard as steel -- like SAP -- and call the bluff by just failing until the sunk cost is so high there can't be another cent added.
  - johnebgd 4y ago
    Government procurement is a broken process today. The railroad companies were reimbursed once the track was set down. We need that for modern projects. Then competent people will get the job done and get paid.
    - MichaelZuo 4y ago
      How would you change the political culture of the US to go back to the mid 1800s without all the drawbacks of back then?
      - ncmncm 4y ago

benj111 4y ago

Ok then. Can we funnel all the marketing, spin and hype towards existing public transport?

falcor84 4y ago
Serious question - how would you actually spin and hype something that already exists? It just reminds me of that old soviet-era joke that goes something like this: First grade teacher in Moscow: "Kids, today I want to teach you all about how life is great in the Soviet Union. In the Soviet Union we have the tastiest food, the most fun toys, the most interesting shows ..." Kids: "Oh, teacher, that sounds amazing, can we please go visit the Soviet Union?"
- benj111 4y ago
  You realise all these new fangled things are old things with a different spin. The boring company makes something worse than the underground. Evtol is basically helicopters, etc.
  - 6510 4y ago
    If there is an hourly train one could say there are 60 moments at which one could chose to travel. In the worse one you've missed it by 0-1 min. It seems reasonable to add the average 30 min to the travel time + margins. One could similarly say there are 60 moments to arrive in an hour. Your appointment could live at the most unfortunate. It seems reasonable to add the average 30 min to the trip again. If the train stops a lot it might be close to accelerating and decelerating most of the time. It seems reasonable to lose half the possible for speed. If it doesn't stop a lot it might take a long time to get to the station. If you need to take 2 trains you might have to wait for the second. Buses and taxis stop far away from the train and traffic is unpredictable. No matter how fast the train is, it can still take a long time to get places. There are countless puzzles left to solve.
    - Grustaf 4y ago
      That is a solved puzzle, public transport is not a new concept, most city dwellers outside of the US rely on it. From the passenger point of view, you simply plan your travel if the train only comes once an hour. Nobody arrives at random to such an infrequent mode of transportation. Once an hour probably means it's intercity travel. From the networks point of view: you constantly monitor travel patterns and optimise frequencies, connections, train lengths etc. With driverless trains the trade-offs are fewer, hence you never need to worry about when the next Copenhagen metro comes.
      - oceanplexian 4y ago
        You lost me at “plan your travel”. Logistically, public transportation is awful. You can’t bring any cargo with you, you can’t tow anything, you need to buy an expensive ticket for each person (Even a compact car can fit 5 people), trains don’t turn around if you have a family emergency, and the comfort level of the most advanced trains in Europe and Japan frankly sucks compared to even a mid-level SUV in the most basic trim. Don’t get me wrong, public transportation is an interesting novelty. But for short trips it’s worse than a car, and for long trips it’s inferior to an airplane. There’s a sweet spot where it works if you’re trying to beat commuter traffic but I’d say that’s about it. The people trying to spend billions to build out these networks have an agenda and frankly I’d prefer if we just fixed our roads and airports.
        Grustaf 4y ago
        It’s only a novelty in the US. In other rich countries where people don’t have a car fetish it’s just the most practical and comfortable way to get to work. Obviously if you need to tow something you can’t use the metro, but that’s a very rare need on the whole. Then you take the car, cursing traffic and the parking situation. Here in Copenhagen you’ll often see carpenters and similar with cargo bikes, so it’s not like you always need a huge SUV to move some tools, or indeed children. Cars are almost never the fastest way to get somewhere in a city. Americans love them for cultural reasons, not because it’s practical. Like in poor countries cars are a still a symbol of freedom and wealth in the US, most of the rich world has moved on from that mindset.
  - Grustaf 4y ago
    You are right about Musk's silly tunnels, but VTOL is much better than helicopters. They combine the convenient landing and taking off of helicopters with the fuel economy of fixed wing flight, i.e. airplanes. If it can be made electric then even better.
    - benj111 4y ago
      Where does the fuel economy come from? What design are we talking about?
      - Grustaf 4y ago
        Fixed wing aircraft are of course much more efficient than helicopters, so the best combo is really a vtol, that has fixed wings but can land vertically.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    Helicopters are locked out of many markets by noise and worries about safety of bystanders. The promise of eVTOLs is access to those.
    - benj111 4y ago
      Why are evtols safer than helicopters for bystanders? They both have the spinny blady things. Re noise, most of the sound comes from the rotors rather than the engine. It's not obvious to me that an evtol craft could significantly improve this. There seems to be an assumption that evtol == multiple ducted fans. This isn't necessarily the case. And electric helicopter would be evtol. Any specific design is going to have different tradeoffs. Eg more motors to fail.
    - fomine3 4y ago
      It's really funny that eVTOL solves nothing, but funded
- nicbou 4y ago
  Not Just Bikes does it well
  - falcor84 4y ago
    I suppose you mean this YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/c/notjustbikes https://www.youtube.com/c/notjustbikes ? It seems that it's hyping the idea of having good public transport, but that doesn't address the chicken-and-egg problem, does it? What I mean is, that most cities seem to have mediocre public transport, and people don't want to use it, so proponents of public transport can't get the budgets to improve it, because there's demonstrably low usage. So how do you use a limited budget to "hype and spin" the existing public transport to prove that your particular city would benefit from higher investment in public transport? The only solution I see is to actually go and set up a new and better route, to prove that your city does in fact have demand for public transport.
    - benj111 4y ago
      I thought it was a pun on spinning.

DoingIsLearning 4y ago

> $113bn for California’s non-existent high speed rail. Those are some serious costs. The cost of the TGV links in France are definitely in the 10s of billions but no 100s of billions. Are you sure those budgets aren't getting eaten by consultants or lawyers doing the impact assessments? Even with higher labour costs that is a pretty steep hike.

ncmncm 4y ago
The opportunities for siphoning money to certain factions may be seen as the real purpose of the project, with any actual train more or less incidental. The same may be seen in recent nuclear power projects, urban tunnels, NASA's SLS rocket, and numerous military procurements, F-35 prominent among them. Actual completion of a project means the money spigot is turned off, which nobody involved wants ever to happen. But sometimes an end is inevitable, and if foreseen, actual delivery of a product might be effected, to save face, as for the case of Finland's nuke.
- rightbyte 4y ago
  Ye you need to be hard as steel -- like SAP -- and call the bluff by just failing until the sunk cost is so high there can't be another cent added.
- johnebgd 4y ago
  Government procurement is a broken process today. The railroad companies were reimbursed once the track was set down. We need that for modern projects. Then competent people will get the job done and get paid.
  - MichaelZuo 4y ago
    How would you change the political culture of the US to go back to the mid 1800s without all the drawbacks of back then?
    - ncmncm 4y ago