Larry Page Is Secretly Working On a Flying Car (bloomberg.com)

Google co-founder Larry Page is personally investing in flying cars. Page has been secretly bankrolling Zee.Aero and Kitty Hawk, two California-based startups working on developing a flying car, reports Bloomberg, citing 10 people familiar with the matter. From the report: Better materials, autonomous navigation systems, and other technical advances have convinced a growing body of smart, wealthy, and apparently serious people that within the next few years we'll have a self-flying car that takes off and lands vertically -- or at least a small, electric, mostly autonomous commuter plane. About a dozen companies around the world, including startups and giant aerospace manufacturers, are working on prototypes. Furthest along, it appears, are the companies Page is quietly funding. "Over the past five years, there have been these tremendous advances in the underlying technology," says Mark Moore, an aeronautical engineer who's spent his career designing advanced aircraft at NASA. "What appears in the next 5 to 10 years will be incredible."

Comments

Re:It's about time

[Anonymous Coward]

will this really make commuting easier?

For Larry Page? Probably. For your great grand children? Yes. For you? Not likely.

Re:It's about time

[zenlessyank]

For the 1%ers, yes. For everyone else... fuck off and click the ads while we track and spam you.

Larry Page wants a vanity project...

[FlyHelicopters]

Well that's nice and all, but this is just rich people with ego vanity projects...

It only takes some basic math of the energy required to lift a pound into the air, then move it forward in the air, to see the problems with this.

This has been tried over and over for years, by people who either don't understand the issues, or don't care and assuming magic will happen.

The whole thing is beyond absurd... As Homer Simpson once said, "Lisa, in this house we obey the laws of Thermodynamics!"

Re:It's about time

[ThosLives]

When you're stuck in traffic you look up into the sky and see all that unused space. Being limited to 2D feels silly in that situation.

You might want to read up on what happens at Oshkosh every year. That's what commuting by air would look like when everyone wants to go to/from the same place. Couple that with electric aircraft with extremely limited flight durations and the tendency of people to not refuel their cars / aircraft with the idea of a contingency situation...

Computer control isn't even going to help you there, unless the computer control allows zero deviation from a programmed start and destination so it can guarantee a no-take-off if there is insufficient fuel/charge to make that flight plus required reserves due to unforeseen traffic, weather, etc.