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Uber's 'Elevate' Project Aims To Bring Flying Electric Cars To Cities By 2026 (businessinsider.com)
Uber has revealed a new project through which it aims to bring flying cars to commuters by 2026. The company published a white paper today outlining its plans for Uber Elevate, a network of on-demand electric aircraft. Business Insider adds: Known as VTOL aircraft -- short for Vertical Take-Off and Landing -- the aircraft would be used to shorten commute times in busy cities, turning a two-hour drive into a 15-minute trip. According to a piece out from Wired on the new plans, Uber doesn't plan to build the aircraft themselves. The ride-hailing company will bring together private companies and the government to deal with the larger issues of making this project a reality, Wired reports. The vehicles would be able to travel at about 150 mph for up to 100 miles and carry multiple people, including a pilot, according to Wired.
Depends on the technology. The failure mode for a lot of aircraft is that they simply glide to the ground. Even helicopters / autogyros do something similar - there's still a lot of momentum in the rotors and you sycamore down to the ground. It's not like the antigravity suddenly fails and you're back to having weight again.
When I was learning to fly, engine failure was one of the things that I had to practice a lot. Engine failure immediately after takeoff is potentially dangerous, because you don't have an engine and you don't have enough speed or altitude to go very far. You typically have to land in a field (or, if you don't want to damage your aircraft in a training exercise, you throttle the engine back and feather the prop, then line up your emergency landing and turn the engine back to maximum late in the approach so that you stay in the air).
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They don't mess with buses or commuter trains.
Yes, they do.
> The vehicles would be able to travel at about 150 mph for up to 100 miles
Cruising at 150 mph is pretty energy expensive, even the tiny Moony M20 series needed the better part of its 200 hp to maintain a 150 mph cruise and most other aircraft using the same engine, say the Piper Arrow or (Rockwell) Commander 112 are generally closer to 120 mph cruise and maybe 140 full-throttle.
So if you convert that to electrical terms, 200 hp is 150 kW. To run that for 45 minutes (takeoff, cruise, land) you need 112.5 kW of battery, and with reserves and stores, at least 150 kW. The Tesla 85 kWh pack is 544 kg, so we're looking at something on the order of 960 kg, or a bit over a ton just for the battery. For comparison, a fully loaded Piper Arrow with four passengers, baggage and a load of fuel is 2,500 lbs.
Now that's assuming you're flying straight and level using wings, the efficient way to fly. This claims to be VTOL, which adds A HUGE AMOUNT.
So, yeah, I'll believe it when I see it.