Airbus Reveals a Modular, Self-Piloting Flying Car Concept (techcrunch.com)

At this year's Geneva Motor Show, Airbus has revealed a concept design created in partnership with Italdesign. "The demonstration vehicle offers modular functionality, meaning it can operate both on the ground and in the air, and Airbus thinks it's one potential answer to the growing problem of urban traffic congestion," reports TechCrunch. From the report: The concept vehicle is intended to work with others to form a network that can be summoned on demand, with passengers hailing a ride from an app on their mobile device. The capsule-based design can connect to either ground or air conveyance modules, letting customers specify their preferred method of transit. It's also designed to be used in concert with other existing transportation methods for maximum efficiency. Airbus and Italdesign call their creation the "Pop.Up System," which includes the artificial intelligence platform that uses what it knows about any individual user, and available routes and transit options to determine the best travel options. The main vehicle itself is a passenger capsule, which holds the rider and which can be paired with either ground and air modules, as well as, Airbus suggests, with hyperloop systems down the line once that tech becomes more widely available. There's a third part of Pop.Up that ensures this whole project touches all bases when it comes to current tech hype -- an interface that will respond and interact with the user in a "fully virtual environment" while in transit. They've thought of everything.

Comments

Re:Parachute, please

[Rei]

Actually, I've come around to view them as kind of inevitable.

1) There is a strong push, and will continue to be, from delivery services for permitting delivery drones. Bit by bit, they'll get it.

2) The economic case will keep causing them to push for a permitting process for larger and larger drones. Bit by bit, step by step, they'll get it.

3) Once you start having drone payloads in the hundreds of kilograms range, people are seriously going to start asking "Why can't you haul people with these?" And then will come all of the financially interested parties pushing, bit by bit, for permission to do so.

That said, this concept ticks all of the wrong boxes.

1) Quadcopter style = inefficient in flight. Even small scale delivery drones are moving away from it. It's fine for toys and little video cameras, but not for scale delivery with any sort of significant crossrange requirements.

2) Requires everyone standardize their cars to a particular drone. Not going to happen.

3) Requires everyone standardize their cars to a particular chassis, and more to the point bans monocoque. Not going to happen.

4) Requires everyone to use other peoples' chassis. Regardless of their condition. Without even knowing what condition they're going to be in.

5) Requires at least one spare chassis be at the destination when you get there. Something complicated by the fact that people can change their mind (or be forced to divert), throwing off estimates of what will be at a location at a given point in time. But at its most fundamental level, constraining people to much more limited destinations.

6) Requires such an integral vehicle connection - the body and chassis - be done in some "rapidly and automatically removable" fashion. Same with the critical connection with the props (albeit with lower mass loadings)

7) Doubles up powertrains. I hope you think battery packs are cheap, because this proposed system means (if done electrically) that you have to have two of them per vehicle, assuming an average of one "drone" in operation per "car". I'm assuming that you're leaving the battery pack behind, since that's a heavy element. Of course, that means when you get to the destination, you're using someone else's battery pack as well.

No, I'm not a fan.

ask yourself why don't we all already have a self-flying helicopter.

Drone helicopters exist. Are you talking about "at scale"? Because scaling up relatively new technology doesn't appear the instant you snap your fingers.

A better question is "why doesn't everyone fly around in helicopters?" in general. And the answers are pilot skill, noise, space requirements, safety, regulations, and cost (including insurance / liability, and the fact that the fuel is very expensive). These are in general, however, interconnected problems and with technological solutions at varying stages of maturity. It's clearly a barrier at present, but I hardly see it as a limitless one. Large, yes, but not unbounded. IMHO, electric is a big potential boon toward scaledown, at least where short flight times are required, as electric motors can be made small, light, and reliable, with very high power densities (making redundancy easier as well), plus they run on dirt-cheap "fuel". Battery mass is a big problem on long flights, but not short.

BTW, helicopters aren't that much less efficient than cars. A 4-passenger helicopter may get ~7 mpg (40 l/100km). But it goes in straight lines and doesn't wait in traffic.

Re:Parachute, please

[TheRaven64]

Additionally, ejection systems are dangerous. The ejector seat mechanism compresses your spine to the extent that people who have ejected from a plane are measurably shorter than prior to ejection. If you're a healthy adult in good physical condition (i.e. the sort of person who is allowed to fly fighter jets) then you can do it a few times and survive (whereas you probably can't explode in a fireball a few times and survive, so ejecting is a better option), but if you eject more than a few times you'll be grounded on medical reasons. If you do the same with a typical commercial aircraft passenger, there's a reasonable chance that they'll die, whereas many commercial aircraft crashes are survivable.

As to just having a parachute, you'd probably only be able to jump from the rear exits without being sucked into the engines. You can't jump without oxygen until the plane is a lot lower than its cruising altitude, and if it can get down low enough to jump and stay there long enough to get 300 people out then it's probably able to manage a survivable landing. Landing from a parachute jump isn't that difficult, but generally requires a little bit of practice - at least some passengers wouldn't be able to do it. The bit after landing is also difficult, as you have to disconnect the chute quickly to avoid being dragged along and you must remember to disconnect the chest straps before the leg straps or you'll end up being strangled. And given that someone always panics and inflates their life jacket inside the plane, in spite of being repeatedly told not to, in simulated crashes, what's the bet that someone wouldn't pull the chord on their parachute by accident (actually surprisingly easy to do when putting the chute on) on the plane and kill / injure other passengers (those springs contains a lot of energy).