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Uber is Getting Serious About Building Real, Honest-To-God Flying Taxis (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader shares an article: When Uber first announced its crazy-sounding plan to explore "on-demand urban aviation" -- essentially a network of flying taxis that could be hailed via a smartphone app and flown from rooftop to rooftop -- the company made it clear that it never intended to go it alone. Today, as it kicked off its three-day Elevate conference in Dallas, Texas, the ride-hail company announced a slew of partnerships with cities, aviation manufacturers, real estate, and electric charging companies, in its effort to bring its dream of flying cars a little closer to reality. Uber said it will be teaming up with the governments of Dallas-Fort Worth and Dubai to bring its flying taxis to those cities first. It is also joining forces with real estate firm Hilwood Properties in Dallas-Fort Worth to identify sites where it will build takeoff and landing pads, which Uber calls "vertiports." It has signed contracts (or is in the midst of contract negotiations) with five aircraft manufacturers to work on the design and production of lightweight, electrically powered vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft. And it launched a partnership with an electric charging company called ChargePoint, to develop charging stations for Uber's flying taxis.
there's no way this can be done cheaply (simple physics tells you that); meaning it'll be the domain of the very wealthy. If this works It'll allow the rich to let the public transit system deteriorate completely while literally being held aloft over it all. If you think the roads & public transportation are bad now wait until the ruling class have no use for them personally.
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The field of flying cars and electronic drones usually excites me. Most of the ideas are pie-in-the-sky, but by and large I find the field fascinating... ... until they talk about Uber creating flying taxis, then the fascination turns to horror.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
This is actually doable, unlike "autonomous car" BS. Essentially electric light aircraft/helicopters. The .001% travel this way already (minus the electric part).
They're going to try to get Lyft drivers, investigative reporters, and law enforcement to jump off tall buildings.
Rule 35 of the internet: "If it can be hacked, it will be". - Charles Stross
Oh... wait... flying taxis.
You can't safely operate flying vehicles in close proximity to tall buildings... so we're going to need a lot more rooftop landing pads and better roof access to them.
The reason you can't fly deep within a heavily urban landscape is that buildings make very strong vortices as wind is forced around corners. Yeah, it looks cool in movies when a helicopter comes down Main, but it's not something you want to do if there's anything more than a light breeze. And then there's all the extra obstacles as you get closer to the ground - wires, lamp posts, signs, etc.
If you want to be honest stop using words like "god".
Making them fly is easy - just have every other driver miss that turn on the bluff. Letting them land where they want with all passengers intact is another matter.
Investors in Uber are wondering exactly when they'll be getting high flying returns - or indeed any return at all - on their investment.
Apparently...
And for some crazy irony, my captcha is: STRESS
However, I haven't missed it, so I've decided to double my investments in popcorn.
I'm looking forward to seeing Uber trying to weasel out of FAA rules.
"It's not an airplane! We don't have to follow the FAA's rules! It's a car, that flies! That's totally different!"
Do you really want to take a ride in flying taxi that's run by a CEO who routinely breaks laws and regulations to get what he want?
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/23/technology/travis-kalanick-pushes-uber-and-himself-to-the-precipice.html?
Don't worry, there will be monkeys.
They are being used to replace the current crop of Uber drivers since the monkeys will accept monkey-chow for payment
The Fifth Element is the first thing I thought about.
So, Uber, the most illegal company in the news this year, full of malware issues, HR issues, surveillance issues, gaming drivers, gaming passengers, stealing money from both, and are they even profitable yet?
Yeah, let's partner with them. Great idea.
Yeah at this point If you made a script that autogenerates articles based on a small subset of keywords you could basically dominate Slashdot submissions. (Systemd, Microsoft + Sucks, Apple, Facebook, Uber, Trump, and IT is all sexist against women).
Yes... Fuck Uber... I'm sick of hearing about this shithole of a company, It will be amazing if they don't get sued out of business or bleed out all of their investors dry before the end of the year. Travis Kalanick is a douche shitbag!
Uber Is Getting Serious About Using The Dream Of Real, Honest-To-God Flying Taxis To Suck Money Out Of Investors
When the revolution comes, we'll know where all the very wealthy will be.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
I mean if they are all fully developed and active and safe like in the 50s comics then maybe, but until then the vast majority of people would say no thank you. And you can't get far when most people say no thank you. Kind of like with VR.
I thought Uber was quite clear they were a "ride sharing" service.
It'll be fun to watch them get smacked down by the FAA when they inevitably decide the laws governing commercial aviation don't apply to them. That is, if the company's still around by the time they plan to roll this out.
I used to be jumping the shark. In honor of Uber, I recommend we modify it to flying over the shark, in your marvelous aeromagical automobile!
Based on what I've been reading lately about Uber, it's going to go bust long before it ever makes any flying cars.
Oh i see flying cars is realistically problematic buuuut traveling through iron tubes, now that's a great idea!
Their design will require special landing and take-off zones, such as on the roofs of parking garages. Why?
The obvious solution is a quad (or multi) copter design with elevator that lowers on cables from the ends of the arms (near the propellers). This will enable it to drop-off and pick-up close to anywhere, without causing wind damage. The elevator should stay stable even in high winds at a reasonable distance under the multicopter.
It also makes sense to design the propellers for lower noise, drop-off from high to keep noise down (lower if there is more wind), and have its batteries quickly swappable for rapidly shifting between paying rides. I'm sure you'd be swapping out the battery pack between every two rides but the fuel efficiency would make this system significantly less expensive to operate than would gasoline powered cars.
This is nothing more than a fluff piece to make Uber look cool and distract people from their horrible practices
While this may seem like a very ambitious endeavor for a relatively small company, Uber plans to create cars that can fly by simply ignoring the laws of physics.
until they talk about Uber creating flying taxis, then the fascination turns to horror.
Look on the bright side: at least it is not United Airlines developing them.
And these flying taxis will come flying out of my ass..
The visual and noise pollution is going to get insane. And, who is going to coordinate all of these flying objects without drivers so they don't collide. And, who is going to pay the bill when the first, second and third ones fall out of the sky and squish someone?
The airline industry has succeeded because of the triple redundancy, incredibly meticulous maintenance, strict over-sight, and highly over-engineered products. I doubt that will be the case for these new devices. And, since they won't be able to fly above 400 feet they will be flying in very turbulent air on windy days anywhere that a flying taxi would have enough customers to make it worth while.
They should get a logo made up of a pig with wings and flying, because that's about when that gets done. Or put the design in Popular Science with all the other things that never come to fruition. I would concentrate more on their core business of trying to make the current business debt free and possible first.
they're Global. They can live anywhere now. They might occasionally fly into a big city but they don't live there. You might know where the 1% of the 1% are because they're famous, but they're also protected by private militaries so good luck with that.
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"Uber" and "Honest" appear together in same headline.
At least they aren't making them self-flying. I imagine it could be quite tiring having to take manual control of a plane every mile, probably even more tiring than just flying the thing manually.
This will be regulated to hell the first time one of their Muslim drivers fills one with explosives and flies into a state capitol building. They aren't putting up all those anti-vehicle barriers just to have the taxi drivers fly over them.
See
https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/37058/what-is-this-odd-aircraft
looks similar to the Aurora quadplane prototype, and the NDA comment is telling. Anyone want to track down the VCV airport lead?
Well, except for the "electric" part, we already have that. The "VTOL aircraft" are helicopters and "vertiports" are heliports.
And I wouldn't bet on commercially viable electric full-size helicopters now. Energy density is crucial and today's batteries simply can't compete with hydrocarbons fuels.
So I bet the only thing that will come out of it is an app that helps get pilots and customers in touch. That's if anything happens at all.
I lived there for about 10 years, I recall they had ATM machines when they first came out well before we had them in Chicago (where I grew up and live now). I foresee these flying cars looking like a pickup truck and will have standard gun racks in the rear window.