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Is the World Ready For Flying Cars? (engadget.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report from TechCrunch, adding: "Is the world ready for flying cars? Sebastian Thrun, the supposed godfather of autonomous driving, and several other tech investors seem to think so." From the report: At TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2017, Thrun talked a lot about flying cars and how that was the future of transportation. So did GGV's Jenny Lee, a prolific investor in China. And so did Steve Jurvetson, one of the original investors in SpaceX. The technical backbone for flying cars seems to be there already -- with drones becoming ever-present and advancements in AI and self-driving cars -- but the time is coming soon that flying cars will be the primary mode of transportation. "I can't envision a future of highways [and being] stuck in cars," Thrun said. "I envision a [future] where you hop in a thing, go in the air, and fly in a straight line. I envision a future where Amazon delivers my food in the air in five minutes. The air is so free of stuff and is so unused compared to the ground, it has to happen in my opinion."
Cars today are forced to move on a two-dimensional plane (ramps, clover intersections and tunnels set aside), and while self-driving cars would make it easier for cars to talk to each other and move more efficiently, adding a third dimension to travel would make a lot of sense coming next. Thrun pointed to airplane transit, which is already a "fundamentally great mass transit system." Jurvetson said he was actually about to ride in a flying car before he "watched it flip over" before arriving to talk about some of the next steps in technology onstage. So, there's work to be done there, but it does certainly seem that all eyes are on flying cars. And that'll be enabled by autonomous driving, which will probably allow flying cars to figure out the most efficient paths from one point to the next without crashing into each other. Lee said that China is closely analyzing changes in transportation, which might end up leading to flying cars. "I do want to highlight that there's going to be huge disruption within the transportation ecosystem in China," Lee said. "Cars going from diesel to electric. China has about 200 million install base of car ownership. In 2016, only 1 million cars are electric. The Chinese government hopes to install 5 million parking lots that are electric... Even the Chinese OEMs are buying into flying taxis."
Cars today are forced to move on a two-dimensional plane (ramps, clover intersections and tunnels set aside), and while self-driving cars would make it easier for cars to talk to each other and move more efficiently, adding a third dimension to travel would make a lot of sense coming next. Thrun pointed to airplane transit, which is already a "fundamentally great mass transit system." Jurvetson said he was actually about to ride in a flying car before he "watched it flip over" before arriving to talk about some of the next steps in technology onstage. So, there's work to be done there, but it does certainly seem that all eyes are on flying cars. And that'll be enabled by autonomous driving, which will probably allow flying cars to figure out the most efficient paths from one point to the next without crashing into each other. Lee said that China is closely analyzing changes in transportation, which might end up leading to flying cars. "I do want to highlight that there's going to be huge disruption within the transportation ecosystem in China," Lee said. "Cars going from diesel to electric. China has about 200 million install base of car ownership. In 2016, only 1 million cars are electric. The Chinese government hopes to install 5 million parking lots that are electric... Even the Chinese OEMs are buying into flying taxis."
No.
Have you seen the way people drive in only two dimensions?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
The answer is always no.
Yet another BeauHD piece of shite.
Not a chance in Hell. People can't drive regular cars today, and my biggest fear about autonomous driving is what little skill people have will be neutered away until they cannot safely drive anything at all.
Sorry - but I'm still pissed that all we ever got was Moller and his useless, bullshit "Skycar" that never had a chance in hell, coupled with a number of "roadable aircraft" like the Icon, Terrafugia, PAL-V, et. al., that are now and will always will be nothing but toys for the idle rich.
Flying Cars? As said in my best Lumberg impersonation - "Uhhhhhmmmmm Yeahhhhhhhhh".
Flying cars are the pipe-dreams we grew up reading about in the 70's Popular Mechanics magazines. It was fiction then - and it's fiction now. The best we have are Lipo batteries that to carry anything useful for any distance would be dangerous as f**k. Or we could be that dude on the turbine-powered hoverboard with a backpack full of kerosene? I forget his name/link but it's cool - but again, never gonna happen for the regular Joe.
Never have a philosophy which supports a lack of courage
For certain definitions of the word "soon", presumably.
It certainly won't be in my life time.
"Is the world ready for flying cars?" is just like asking if the world is ready for helicopters.
Given how you've seen most people drive, it's just as unlikely they'll safely pilot aircraft either. You'll have long stretches of crashed vehicles, and so on.
Is this the tech VC's version of the 7 Minute Abs pitch? "Why would anyone travel in two dimensions when they can travel in three?"
It's a little more complicated than that. Here are some things that don't matter so much in 2D road travel but matter a lot when you're flying
* wind, winds changing at higher altitudes, and wind shear
* Air speed vs ground speed
* Heading vs ground track
* Convective weather (at takeoff, all along path of travel, and at destination)
* Air density (at takeoff, all along path of travel, and at destination)
* Vehicle weight for takeoff and travel, and weight changes as fuel burns
* Lift characteristics at altitude (at takeoff, all along path of travel, and at destination)
* Ability to descend safely if a system fails (single engine?) or you are crashed into
* Empty gas tank doesn't fail gracefully
* Inability to stop moving (probably)
* Obstacles (hills, mountains, towers, buildings
* Etc
As someone who flies, I am (a) certain there will be some sort of flying vehicle some day, and (b) aware there is a lot to figure out. These are all obviously solvable problems because people already do fly. It's just hugely expensive and requires a lot of training (relative to driving). What we are talking about here is ModelT-izing flight which will require a lot of idiot proofing including expensive redundancy while at the same time really driving down the purchase and operational costs of flying. These are not small problems, and these problems are not analogous to the problems of autonomous driving.
The technical backbone for flying cars seems to be there already
Has anti-gravity been invented? No? Then the technology is not there yet. Cars falling out of the sky is not an acceptable solution.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Many drivers have trouble staying in their lane, especially in the era of smartphones. Imagine one texting and flying. Yikes!
3-dimensional security is much more difficult. A wall doesn't do much good if one can just fly over and drop in. Lightweight consumer drones are already considered a threat by many. Even the lightest flying car is going to be larger and weigh far more, and thus presenting a bigger threat.
Even if the above issues can be mitigated, there's still physics to contend with. A flying car is going to require a lot more energy to travel the same distance. Some may counter with examples illustrating otherwise, but before doing so, be sure you're comparing apples to apples. A roughly 2 ton passenger car (all those safety features add much weight) along with comfortable seating for 4 adults plus decent cargo space.
Have you seen the way people drive in only two dimensions?
I think that's why we are hearing this from someone who works on autonomous vehicles. The only way we are going to have flying cars is if there is a computer driving it to stop us doing something stupid.
If I were writing a science fiction story, I wouldn't include flying cars as an element.
Rather, I'd just make 'travel pods' - comfortable compact living quarters equipped with entertainment/work surfaces, storage, and seats that convert smoothly into beds - all within a strict volume/weight, all in a small geo-stabilized shock mount.
All transportation would take these pods. Cars, helicopters, boats, spacecraft, and essentially everything else. Most of these vehicles would be somewhat crude-looking frameworks compared to our current fashionable vehicles - but few would care, as the method of getting there are just details, and not the important part, very few would put any status into it.
Going from New York to a rural town outside of Hong Kong might involve a few cars, a ferry, an ocean freighter, then a small freight helecopter (large drone-like thing) to get you to the exact house, which the passenger would rarely care about. The cost would be something similar to what we'd consider an Amazon shipping expense, regardless of the number of legs, and time roughly scales with distance.
The biggest concern of folks traveling this way would be time taken and menu selection. All transport units would have a somewhat extensive set of diagnostic tools, with an occasional scandal for any company suspected of skirting the rather heavy regulations put on those, or in any way skirting safety mores. The failure on a redundant pod mounting arm would actually make the news, as would anything even close to death of a passenger.
This is my guess of something closer to the actual future, based on existing trends. Folks desire focus on the things they care about, and transportation isn't as sexy as it was. They want to get there cheap, and not care about the details. Our taste for safety should also go up over time, and the whole thing deserves a bit of a push towards automation and commoditization. .
I certainly wouldn't be sad to see our current commercial car companies/insurance going away, in favor of industrial economy-scale vehicles built to better use every resource.
Lots of stories you could make with that concept too - from Asimov Caves of Steel-style stories with murder sub-plots, to stories of how prisons would work in such a culture.
Ryan Fenton
We've been hearing for decades that flying cars--and AI--are just a few years away. Right.
For flying cars, there's still one big problem that's not even close to a solution: Battery technology is nowhere near close to being able to store enough energy to make flying cars practical. A Tesla car battery weighs in at 1,200 lbs, and it can only power a car--on the ground--around 200 miles. It takes a lot more energy to keep a one ton drone aloft.
And then there's the problem of safety. Air traffic is routed specifically for safety, to minimize the possibility of crashes into buildings or people. With flying cars, the whole point would be to fly among people and buildings. This cannot have a good ending.
I really hope Apple makes the first flying cars. I've given it a lot of thought. The same people who bought Apple Watches will buy the flying cars. It'll be glorious. It could solve the housing shortage on the West Coast.
You are welcome on my lawn.
No, but test them at small towns, and if they do okay, gradually scale up.
Table-ized A.I.
yeah yeah "welcome to /." etc
But seriously... The article talks about autonomous vehicles being a needed pre-requisite. Read the comments and there are at least half a dozen threads starting with variation of
"but people suck at normal driving"
turns out people suck at reading and just want to be the first to shout. I want to go back to the days where there was some intelligent conversation on here
No the world isn't ready for flying cars, the energy use is too great. We need to reduce fossil fuel usage not increase it. And whilst short plane flights with batteries is possible, it's just not practical enough to become a significant market. VTOL with batteries is even less practical.
Although orthogonal to autonomous flying, consider the miles-per-gallon efficiency of air vs ground transport:
https://paullaherty.com/tag/cessna-172-fuel-economy/
Realistic electric aircraft are even further off than autonomous flying. And even with electric aircraft, the energy per mile is still lower than ground transport. So until we have so much renewable energy available that we need not be concerned with efficiency, flying cars will remain a elite technology.
Calling this a "jet" engine is about as good as the marking hype can get: https://lilium.com/technology/
Lol
Seeing as how flying cars do not and will not exist, I donâ(TM)t suppose it really matters.
"The air is so free of stuff and is so unused compared to the ground, it has to happen in my opinion."
...
It will no longer be unused and free of stuff once we have flying cars - and you definitely won't just be able to go in a straight line. They already have rules about where you can fly a drone. Imagine a few hundred flying cars in some small area. And of course, if you do have an accident, whose house do you hit and how fast are you going? It gets real ugly real fast
Why does every post even remotely involving China somehow end up mentioning "Well in China they..." As if China is some monumental homogenous blob that devours all life. One that somehow involves no individual or companies whatsoever but is instead the subject of an Apple commercial about 1984 from 1984. In fact where are any of the companies mentioned here? Last I looked investors didn't actually invent new things, engineers did, working at actual companies. Companies with names, and products, and timelines.
Smart guy, nice guy personally. But I wouldn't trust his engineering judgment, period. From which I conclude that it's safe to ignore his self-serving prognostications about the future, and probably safer to bet against them.
This is absolutely ridiculous. Do you, from even your own air travel, see how many equipment checks and processes there are to be done before an aircraft flies, and how often just the smallest electronics or airframe/engine problem grounds an aircraft?
And you're hoping that Joe Schmoe's car, that he's stored in his driveway, driven rattling down the highway hitting who knows what, is going to be converted suddenly into a flying apparatus that meets any kind of necessary safety regulations?
Keep on dreaming, and posting shit stories like this!
Looks interesting!!
That's what we need drunk rednecks doin donuts on the roof of our houses. And won't it be great when the GPS directs traffic thru your backyard, the downdraft from those engines will be a delight for the summer pool party attendies
That is what the learned (two syllables) call an aeroplane. Aeroplanes are not cars.
Where? By whom? I don't see drones on a regular basis. I've never seen a drone deliver a package. The last two times I saw a drone, it was being piloted by a peeping tom, one time resulting in arrest.
The world isn't ready for flying cars.
The world isn't ready for drones.
The word isn't ready for autonomous cars.
What planet do these fucktards live on?
I'm looking at you, Sebastian Thrun.
I'm looking at you, Steve Jurvetson.
Aeroplanes are not cars.
If it is personal transportation, and it flies from point A to point B, where neither A nor B is an airport, then it is a flying car. Any other details don't matter.
but rear-ended Pintos have been around for decades.
Table-ized A.I.
Flying cars need even more energy than ground-based ones, particularly when in a traffic jam as you cannot turn off the engine.
The skies would also quickly fill up causing traffic jams up there. So far any increase in capacity has only
Those visions you see in presentation are just there to not scare away potential engineers, the only actual use for this is in the military.
Working at a supplier to an avionics-manufacturer.
Do you have any idea how much parts for commercial airliners cost?
If the flying thing/car is autonomous it eill be commercial and you will be paying out your nose for someone to guarantee that it works all the time - not most of the time
And only if Musk is behind it!
And only if it flys itself!
And only if I can order double-capacity power!
And only if it is subsidized by The Government, and only if Mexico pays for it, directly or indirectly!
And only if I provides adequate space for me to remove all sharp objects from my person, and then to place my head between my legs, and then KISS MY ASS GOOD-BYE!
Thank you!
The Neutrino Catcher
If it is personal transportation, and it flies from point A to point B, where neither A nor B is an airport, then it is a flying car.
And not a helicopter.
So the Wright brothers invented the flying car a century ago, and planes with floats are actually cars? Your definition doesn't seem to match how "car" and "plane" are actually used. But whatever. To each his own definition.
Traditionally it also meant something that you could drive on the road as well as fly, and it should be small enough to fit into a single-car garage. But as the many previous attempts have shown, you tend to end up with a crappy car and a crappy plane that happen to be the same thing. Nowadays they have jumbo drones big enough to carry a person.
The technology for "personal air transportation" is already available (though still rather expensive), but the technology to control that much air traffic safely is definitely not ready for prime time yet. People are working on it, though, so eventually it will probably happen. But I think self-driving cars are going to revolutionize personal transportation long before that... which will reduce the demand for flying cars.
The desire to fly above traffic is greatly reduced when you don't have to do the driving yourself.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Is anyone about to allow a Muslim fly a car? Straight over the barriers protecting government buildings? It might work in China where they have a more proportionate response to Muslim attacks, but not in the West where we go on about how they are the real victims
This is bats.
This is yet another Slashdot trolling article. The only way flying cars can succeed, is if extremely powerful AI clears up traffic congestion in the air. If gridlock is a problem on the ground, air collisions should be a much worse problem in the air, or flying cars will be flying helter-skelter like millions of bats flying in different directions in a confined space. Remember that space in the lower atmosphere is finite. There is a severe limit to how many flying cars can fit in that small space, especially in urban areas.
In this article, Thrun's statement is hogwash, and he should know it:
"and fly in a straight line"
Thrun apparently is joking with us, because the air space relatively near the ground will be so congested that flying in a straight line from point A to point B will be impossible. He doesn't understand spherical geometry, because he really means in a straight plane, not in a straight, one dimensional line.
Good job Slashdot for catching that.
the energy costs are a main factor, too.
in some places where it makes sense, people use small helicopters regularly(australia). even for herding cattle.
the real question to ask is when will the world get tired of dolts speaking about stuff that people have been speaking for 60+ years.
like.. singularity. it's been a theme in scifi since the forties.
do we have it? haha no and we don't even have a path to it. doesn't stop a lot of people making their entire living by talking about it. it's easy to sound smart if there's nothing discussed.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Flying cars are much like fusion reactors. To anyone who understands what it is, the benefits are obvious and its easy to get excited about them. But there are some very serious issues which make them pretty absurd without decades of development. The biggest difference between the two is that we have already done decades of development on fusion reactors and we still can't use one to provide consumer electricity.
Americanizing != Fixing
BeauHD the H1-B. Would make a good cartoon character.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Would these be the same type of computers that currently control fly by wire aircraft yet still have to hand back control to the pilots if conditions exceed their pre-programmed limits? Yeah, I can see that handover going well with a flying car and a "driver" who doesn't have a first clue what to do next.
Or a personal jetpack.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Will they be made of gleaming alloy, and will they be as wide as two lanes? These questions need to be answered.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
A self driving Car in a Traffic Jam is still a Stuck Car. How about self driving buses ?
Traditionally it also meant something that you could drive on the road as well as fly
I watched The Jetsons every weekend, and George's flying car never once went on a road. It doesn't even have wheels.
1: the flying is done by an automated system (subject to faa/relevent authioerety approval) or 2: A pilots licence (including nite/ifr flying) is reqiered
"Aeroplanes are not cars."
Airplanes can be highway drivable cars also. But the limitations of such a vehicle seem pretty numerous. You need a runway and a pilot's license, etc,etc,etc. The likelihood is that they will be mediocre aircraft and worse automobiles. There are probably a few situations where there is a reasonable use case. But for the most part, they aren't likely to be flying cars in the Jetsons, Futurama, Fifth Element sense.
Helicopters might come closer, maybe ... But there might be some huge safety issues. It's not for nothing that they are called "choppers".
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
We are not ready for the energi infrastruktur. A flying car will always consume way more energi to travel the same distance.
but few would care, as the method of getting there are just details, and not the important part, very few would put any status into it.
Not likely. Look at shoes: They're just to put on your feet and go somewhere, but there's fantastic "status" in them. AC
Americans invented that one, so airplane is the actual name, to be fair.
It is almost as if the energy requirements to overcome rolling friction were lower than those needed to completely negate gravities hold on an object.
I seriously doubt flying cars will be the norm. The average family could not afford them, your almost guaranteed to perish if they crash and your talking about sharing the same air space with the ever growing drone population. Even if this was going to happen, all your doing is moving the gridlock from the ground systems of transportation to the air.
Actually, it was Richard Pearse, from New Zealand, several months before the Wright Bros. And, for the record, wherever you see the phrase 'invented by Edison' substitute 'patented first in the USA by Edison' - it is a very important distinction.
This is complete nonsense. A) There is not enough airspace b) there are no flying cars beyond stunts that are not ready for normal use c) most people are not pilots d) there are not enough airports e) energy-efficiency is very bad f) cost is very bad.
Seriously, this moronic idea needs to die until we have anti-grav, no energy problems and working AI pilots.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Broken aircraft DROP.
Actually, no.
Airplanes with broken engines tend to glide (like a not as well optimized gliger).
Helicopters with a broken engine tend to autorotate (like a auto-gyro).
But yeah, you can count on cheaply mass produced in China "drone-like flying cars" to not have well tough-out and as safe as possible failure modes.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I will accept 'folds up small and light enough to carry in one hand' as an adequate substitute for 'drives on the road'.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Rename helicopters "flying cars" and you're done.
It's easy to just rename the vehicle and exactly get what you need (a very versatile and compact form of transportation).
(The thing that they plan is supposed to by a "drone-inspired flying car" - i.e.: a multi-rotor helicopter.)
The problems come from the one handing the controls.
Simply rename the average dangerous idiot behind the wheel as "helicopter pilot" won't magically make him thousands of times more reliable...
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The only drawback with your plan is that you'll need to wait a little bit longer.
Apple will probably only "invent" the flying car a decade after they hit production elsewhere.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
> adding a third dimension to travel would make a lot of sense coming next ... you mean global climate change? You're saying a transport system that uses perhaps 5 to 10 times as much energy as existing technologies is what we need at this point?
Sure, we solved the pilot problem. Call me when you figured out the problem about how to make VTOL use less energy than a wheel.
Duh.
Come on, he's fighting those urges he's had since puberty. The only way he knows is to project those feelings onto others.
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>> Is the World Ready For Flying Cars?
That question is straight out of the 1960's
Today, the question is :
"Is the World Ready For Autonomous Electric Cars?"
aaaaaaa
most merkins can't even handle a manual stick drive in 2d!
Using flying cars to tackle the problem of congestion is an escape of addressing the real issue of population density / population control. We are just now beginning to create vehicles that reduce the emissions that are making our planet less and less habitable - plus, have you seen city drivers??? Most drivers in the Washington DC area shouldn't be allowed to drive in general, not to mention, the latest terrorism weapon of choice seems to be driving into crowds - what kind of damage could be done with a flying car that could bypass fences & gates? I get envisioning a better future - and most of us want to see a metropolis that perhaps resembles something like Star trek's federation, but I think the realism of making such a thing a reality is far more grim. Tackling our out of control, unregulated population would significantly cut down our carbon footprint, emissions, unemployment rate, and traffic. I'm not saying "Hey lets go off a bunch of people we disagree with" or "Lets abort some babies" - I'm suggesting that since we already killed Darwin with health care / medicine / government assistance, we can at least do the planet a solid by monitoring / regulating our own population, especially in an age where low-level workers are constantly being replaced by machines. Sure that sounds cold & harsh, but the reality is the future has less jobs to offer because we are constantly becoming more efficient. I have 4 siblings (6 including 2 half-brothers), not that I'm not grateful to be alive, but is there a genuine need to have more than 2-3 children? Is it fair to have more children than can be adequately provided for? I recall seeing an MCI commercial for a video-telephone-watch that disclaimed "coming in the year 2000". It seems fair to say that we were 17 years behind that prediction, so maybe in another 17 years we will see flying cars - but be prepared to be plagued with an entirely new set of problem in exchange for traffic.
Sorry, but people, as a group, are mouth-breathing, drooling, drunken morons of questionable parentage.
Cars, as they are, are barely within their ability to control.
Flying cars would just get lots and lots (and LOTS) of people killed.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Rather, I'd just make 'travel pods' - comfortable compact living quarters equipped with entertainment/work surfaces, storage, and seats that convert smoothly into beds - all within a strict volume/weight, all in a small geo-stabilized shock mount...
The cost would be something similar to what we'd consider an Amazon shipping expense, regardless of the number of legs, and time roughly scales with distance.
Just ignore the laws of physics and economics, anything is possible.
'It is claimed Pearse flew and landed a powered heavier-than-air machine on 31 March 1903, nine months before the Wright brothers flew their aircraft,[1] but the documentary evidence to support such a claim remains open to interpretation, and Pearse did not develop his aircraft to the same degree as the Wright brothers, who achieved sustained controlled flight.[2] Pearse himself never made such claims, and in an interview he gave to the Timaru Post in 1909 only claimed he did not "attempt anything practical ... until 1904".' -- Wikipedia
People just voted for Donald Trump as their fucking president, for crying out loud. And you want to put flying cars in their hands ?
No, the world is not ready and cannot be ready:
* Cars are incredibly wasteful and unsustainable in the long run (some would argue - unsustainable now and are in the process of being dropped already in many respects).
* Flying is incredibly wasteful, and while it cannot be easily replaced with another mode of travel, it certainly shouldn't be expanded.
While oil is still cheaply available, these points may be lost on many, and the guzzling of (practically) non-renewable planetary resources continues. But when prices hit $100 again, and then $200 and $400, we will all realize what a silly idea flying cars are.
(This is of course not to say anything about the technology of flying cars. Also, if we get cold fusion, then all bets are off.)
From employers to education, when you look at the main reasons our roadways are congested, it says a lot about what we could do today to drastically improve the situation.
How many employers could support employees working from home, but continue to hold on to an obsolete mentality of forcing people to waste countless hours commuting to a building and sit in a cube or office all day?
How many schools could support virtual classrooms, but refuse to do so for similar reasons?
Get on the roadways during a national holiday, and it becomes pretty damn clear as to the root cause of a lot of traffic today. Get workers off the road who don't need to be there and gain productivity by not forcing them to commute. If college can be virtual, then chances are high school can be as well. Kids by that age are old enough to be on their own at home if need be.
With regards to that whole "supervision" excuse, people are either mature and engaged enough to succeed, or they are not, and the burden of babysitter should not be thrust upon teachers or employers. No one has time for your childish toddler bullshit.
Seriously, we want to add a -third- dimension to the driving experience?! Come to Orlando FL, my home town, where when there's not a cop around, traffic laws are just mere suggestions. And the cops don't bother following the same laws. The thought of adding a Z-axis to the average driver's motion range just scares the absolute dog-crap out of me.
-> I dislike sigs...
When they are, it will also be the Year of the Linux Desktop! Woo-hoo!!
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
How do the energy requirements and environmental impacts compare with those of 2D-ish driving?
Said it best: I used to be with it, then they changed what 'it' was. Now what I'm with isn't "it", and what is "it" is weird and scary to me!
A 2 ton steel and iron metal box going 85 miles an hour and fueled by thousands of tiny explosions a second, cooled with chemicals that turn into bone eating acid when burned (r134a). At any given time there is only 4-6 square inches of contact with the ground to try to steer and/or stop this 2 ton rocket coffin.
Look at all the horrible accidents with horse drawn buggies, at least the horses try to avoid things on their own! Can you imagine how much worse it would be without the horse and moving 5 times as fast? Why human reflexes couldn't possibly hope to keep up with such speeds! The world will never be ready for every day "automobile" usage. Anyone that thinks such an insane contraption would be an every day thing has clearly gone mad with syphilis!
As a child of the 60's, this has been the same promise since I was watching the Jetsons. Let's lets pull human stupidity out of the question and assume that self driving cars / air cars systems work effectively. And the litany of rules, regulations and codes for safe zones is written and accepted at the NTSB through local levels...
THe problem is COST.
Energy required for flight is orders of magnitude greater for flight. Add insurance... what will GEICO charge you for a "flying car" to cover potential property damage to anything you may happen to fly over?
I hate when practicality kills a cool dream, but with the risk, liability and costs, these won't be in every garage. And by the way, we've had flying cars that worked rather well since the 60's... but again, costs.
If we are talking about humans driving flying cars, then no. Even really experienced pilots have problems flying, because the human brain is evolved to mostly deal with 2-D (as for example, on the Serengeti plains). 3-D coordination is mediated by the cerebellum, which is comparatively small in humans. In birds, it's the largest part of the brain, and birds manage marvellously in 3-D. Now, if we're talking about autonomous flying cars, then still no, at least not yet. We would have to see what the flocking behaviours are of flying cars. It they are too dramatic and unexpected, humans will panic, some will have heart attacks, etc.
We can't even drive on the ground with lines and markers everywhere.
I can't even imagine how terrible letting people fly their cars would be.
Traditionally it also meant something that you could drive on the road as well as fly
I watched The Jetsons every weekend, and George's flying car never once went on a road. It doesn't even have wheels.
I think it's the same phenomenon as "space pirate" and the patent "peanut butter and jelly sandwich .... on the internet!"
Even if vinyl had died out, kids would still understand "borken record"
The point is to reference something familiar and yet make it different.
So, a Chinook helicopter, then? The kind that's been in use for heavy lifting for, oh, 50 years or so?
Given that these are inspired by drones - i.e.: Quadcopters (or more)
it's more appropriate to call them Dual chinook (or more. Beware of the Triple-chinook Hexa-copters !)
But, basically, as the AC wrote above - the "flying cars" aren't anything new once you pay attention to helicopters.
It's the "use AI to make a helicopter pilot out of drunken driver Average Joe" part that is going to be a bit more challenging, I think.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Flying autonomous cars will happen in numbers before autonomous cars. I also predict it will happen in China, developers of the inexpensive toy quadcopters. I believe Ehang is testing in Dubai.
Hell, even with wings, there were modern jets that are notoriously bad flyers, only kept up by sticking the biggest fucking engine on it and hoping. The F14 would be a good example.
Ok by flying cars I mean multi-rotor drones, not shit cars with folded wings from a 1950s newsreel buffed up in 4K video.
I wanna take off and land right where I wanna go, not have to go drive a half hour to a takeoff area.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Or a broomstick
British invented the English language, and whatever they use is the de facto international standard.
People selling said cars: YES
Reality in which people can barely manage to drive on a mostly flat plane: NO
1.) Energy... it takes a lot of energy to keep a car in the air. We already have flying cars, helicopters and planes. People don't use them because they're expensive.
2.) Maintenance... have you seen how people maintain the majority of cars on the road? How many broken down cars do you drive by each day on your commute? Imagine a non-maintained flying car crashing into a houseful of kids. Think of the children!
3.) Traffic control... airplanes and helicopters are easy to guide now because there aren't that many in the air. Once we all have flying cars, you either need to establish "lanes" like the roads we have now or have an always on, always capable collision avoidance system working in full 360 degrees in all 3 dimensions.
Until those problems are all solved ( 1. Nearly unlimited fuel source 2. Required maintenance that disables vehicle if missed 3. Guidance system with collision avoidance that's weather proof, bird proof, etc.) flying cars will remain science fiction and expensive toys for billionaires.
Unless the future is dirigibles, these things are going to have to push air at a high rate and that has always guaranteed noise. If you ever see marketing video for flying vehicles that don't include actual sound, please remember to try and imagine what it would sound like.. and consider that they might not want you to think about it.
I'd be happy to be shown some technology that doesn't have this problem, but my understanding is that it's not really physically possible unless someone can get precise control over interference patterns (i.e. something like directed sound lasers for propulsive purposes). Otherwise, they should either have to build soundproof walls around sky roads or pay me for my trouble.
Outside of Britain, the world speaks Ameriglish. The Brits really do need to catch up.
Filthy white supremacist.
There will never be flying cars.
There will soon be, however, autonomous passenger carrying drones (APCDs, aka ApeSeeds) that will travel point to point, evade each other, and adhere to the flight corridors defined by each municipality.
"British invented the English language, and whatever they use is the de facto international standard."
There is no de facto international standard for English, because there is no international Académie Anglaise to set the standard. International English does away with irregular verbs, for instance, somethings that the King's English does not.
If you are looking for an international standard for well spoken English, you can point to South African English. I've heard South Africans speak better English than Elizabeth Regina, bless Her soul. Deplorable as it may seem, English dialects have taken over the English language on the Isles. I suppose you would like to say that Gordon Brown speaks standard English. Nice try, pal.
It is much easier to safely manage air traffic than to devise safe self-driving cars.
Detection and avoidance of other aero vehicles can be done with existing technology, municipally defined air corridors can be incorporated into GPS aware autopilots. But good collision avoidance in self-driving cars involves somehow seeing around obstacles, and dealing with capricious moving obstacles like deer, toddlers chasing rubber balls, jay-walkers popping out from behind parked trucks, etc. And self-driving cars have but two dimensions to maneuver in.
Going airborne avoids a huge amount of difficult problems that the self-driving car developers have to contend with.
Oh! And pot holes and road debris, downed power lines, flooded roads, patches of black ice, and so forth. Self-driving cars might be kewl on Santa Monica Boulevard, but in the real world of East Coast cities, not so much. Definitely not so easily.
Self driving cars need to prove themselves on the ground first. I've heard that the AI needed for flying is simpler than that needed for ground based driving, but more is at stake, so I still think ground based AI is a necessary proving ground.
It takes more energy to fly than to drive. Let's get a bit farther down the path of solving our energy issues before switching to a mode of transportation that gets 5 mpg (a 747 gets about 5 mpg, maybe not a fair comparison).
It's inevitable that a car will fail mid-flight, it's going to happen. What if they fall out of the sky and take out little Timmy while he's sleeping? Should cars be limited to flying in certain corridors? Certain distances off the ground? State inspections today are a joke, what would need to be changed there?
If they do become a thing, I'd expect at least initially that they will be so highly regulated that the common folk cannot afford one. The "state inspections" should be much more frequent and much more thorough. Insurance for when it falls out the sky would be needed. The management costs would be so high that a flying taxi like service (where the AI drives) seems like more of a possibility.
Visualize an electric Smart Fortwo car with fold-out quad rotors and you'll be imagining a true flying car. Capable of jumping over traffic jams. Performing U-turns on divided roadways. Roof top parking.
Now strip off its wheels and drive train and use the weight saved to increase the size of its battery. Make the flight controls semi-autonomous: you use something like Google Maps to select your destination and the vehicle finds the best route. And uses collision avoidance technology and active cooperation with all other aerovehicles to assure an uneventful ride. Sit back and enjoy the view.
That was easy to answer.
True, but ultimately you're swapping one set of problems for another, bird-strikes and weather instead of jaywalkers and deer, and mishaps in the air result in falling debris instead of traffic jams (or perhaps both).
I'll grant you that both "self-driving" capabilities (air and surface) are just around the corner in terms of technological readiness. But I still think that the surface version will become prevalent first, if only because the price per vehicle is so much lower. Also, so much of our urban living space is designed without flight in mind. If you're going to land and take off between the skyscrapers of Manhattan or the houses and trees Des Moines, you'll need a very specialized vehicle, which is probably going to be very expensive.
Meanwhile, Tesla is churning out tens of thousands of self-driving cars every year... soon to be hundreds of thousands. Sure, they're not "fully" autonomous yet, but in theory all they need is a software update to enable it, which should be available in a couple of years. Eventually, you'll be able to Uber-call a driverless taxi to cover your last-mile issues, and leave the rest to public transit (less so in rural areas, obviously). At that point, why bother with a flight?
In some markets (like LA County) it could be a real time saver, but I think in a lot of places surface vehicles will ultimately win.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Nobody cares about a standardized English because it would result in Not-Invented-Here. You see this with Quebec French, Mainland Chinese, and Russian. Where some government entity wants to force the populace to not use loan words, and use the official word in their language. If that happened in English you would rapidly see American, Australian and Canadian English turn into their own monsters with different nouns for exactly the same thing that other versions of English officially aren't allowed to use.
Occasionally there are slang words invented in Australia that don't translate to slang in American. I am sure the opposite is true. This is because Australia and New Zealand is far removed from the English-Canadian-American culture sphere. Likewise there are words used by Scots and Irish that only exist in the UK vernacular, but not in the majority of the Canadian and American English.
If anything American and Canadian English is identical except for deliberate spelling choices, which Canadians tend to not give a care about outside of academia. Color or Colour. Southerners tend to speak like uneducated farmers. This is because of time zones. All the prairie states and provinces do not watch news sources out of New York or Los Angeles. Canadians do tend to watch news sources in their own time zone, and thus pick up language use consistent with the US states in the same time zone. This is also likely why Atlantic Provinces have the least intelligible accents.
But you know what, this comment is likely buried deep in a troll thread.
Define "soon".
Actually it wasn't. The evidence is sketchy and he himself made no such claim that he achieved sustainable flight in 1903, as his control system was basically shiite. He said he did not attempt anything practical until 1904.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
The only thing that distinguishes a plane from a car is where it is stored. If it is stored at its destination, it is a car. If it must be stored and parked away from the destination, it is a plane.
Eg a helicopter is a car if it remains parked on the helicopter pad. It is not a car if the passenger is dropped off somewhere and the is parked elsewhere ( returning to base )
A plane is never parked at a private residence, even the richest people do not want to spend money on operating a private airport.
The kind of flying car we are going to end up with will be closer to the Jetsons clamshell design, but will not be as small as them. In all likeliness they will be short haul only and resemble a cross between a Zeppelin and a quadcopter. An air bag will inflate and be heated to provide the lift, and the quadcopter part will provide steering so it's not like a boat.
Ready? Not until *your* insurance pays fora computer controlled, radar-guided antiaircraft gun to blow you out of the air before you crash into my second floor bedroom.
Yes, you bloody well *will*, Addicts on their zombiephones, distracted teenagers or parents, older folks who "lose control", and drunks, and.....
Who's gonna foot the bill for the necessary infrastructure? You'd have to build landing pads and charging stations and repair/storage depots, and a lot of them too if you want it to become the dominant mode of transportation like these VCs claim they envision. Our cities and communities would need to be seriously reconfigured for such a massive scale. Then there's the noise and space pollution that you take from the road and onto the sky instead. I guess if you don't mind seeing the sky getting clogged with flying hunks of metal everywhere then that might not be an issue, but it would be for me.
Why can't these guys just settle for having flying cars just complement rather than supplement things? In fact, that's a question I have for a lot of startups; why not complement rather than supplement?
So, are you talking CV-22 that tends to light the landing field on fire, or the AV-8 that tends to literally rip taxiways apart.
Unless the Mach drives or me drives actually turn out to be much more scalable than anything we've seen to suggest, there isn't a chance in hell, because the thrust needed for a vertical launch requires a 300' clear space for safety and destroys shit inside that.
There's a reason the police shut down the road before life flight lands, and no amount of Pollyanna bullshit is going to defeat physics.
Definition of "soon": 1. After Real Soon Now, and before End Of Times. 2. (in context) After LAPD deploys quadcopters to monitor traffic and attach tickets to the passenger windshield of speeding cars, and before China establishes its first lunar colony.
A self driving Car in a Traffic Jam is still a Stuck Car. How about self driving buses ?
The science is that cars that can coordinate and drive consistently will improve traffic. Self-driving cars can also do things like follow very closely at high speeds making freeway travel more efficient. Certainly won't solve everything of course.
Airplanes can be highway drivable cars also.
Practically, no, they can't. Anything light enough to fly wouldn't come close to meeting road safety standards.
Visualize an electric Smart Fortwo car
Ok yes let's visualize that.
with fold-out quad rotors and you'll be imagining a true flying car.
It'd be 1/2 engine and use an enormous amount of fuel. And you'd need ear protection to drive it.
increase the size of its battery
Nothing in the form factor of a car is going to fly on battery. Even if you could get the power, you'd never get the longevity required to make it a viable transportation device. Have you ever picked up a quad drone? They have to be as light as a feather to get off the ground.
Capable of jumping over traffic jams. Performing U-turns on divided roadways. Roof top parking.
So a free-for-all basically? Sure that scales. The fact that it's happening hundreds of feet in the air where any mishap will result in death makes it all the more fun.
You should at least be able to park it in your driveway, and take off from there.
I think we'll see tesla level (hard to afford, but decent) within 10 years.
Until they can make them silent, flying cars will create incredible noise pollution. If you've ever heard the Martin Jetpack you will know just one of them is intensely irritating. I can see that GPS will allow automatic allocation of zones for ascending, descending, and travel in different directions (just like aviation) to minimise contentions, but technology is not foolproof, and we will see a lot more ugly accidents.
One of my neighbors just lands in his field, on the water, or on snow. Sometimes, he lands on fields that don't belong to him.
By their definition, it must be a flying car! I'll have to let him know.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
But, of course, a "flying car" is NOT a car with wings on it whether they "fold up" or not.
A "flying car" is like the DeLorean from *Back to the Future*. **THAT** is a flying car looks like.
We'll get there eventually.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
"The World Was Not Ready for (generic celebrity's) Flying Car!"
The F14 would be a good example.
On the other hand, it's successor the F15 managed to land with only one wing.
(But yeah, overall, fighter jets tend to be optimized for maneuverability, which tend not to emphasis stability.)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Nope. You are so wrong.
You can buy an autogyro now with an empty weight of 585 lb and gross weight of 910 lb, seating two and a couple of sacks of groceries, which is comparable to a ForTwo. The gyro is powered by a 100hp engine, which is within the range of what could be installed in a ForTwo. While this is a gyrocopter and not a quadcopter, it demonstrates that a multirotor VTOL craft using four, six, or 8 electric motors powering individual rotors is within the realm of possibilities.
Gyrocopters like the AutoGyro Calidus can typically cruise at 90 - 110 mph, with a typical range of 400 - 500 miles. A quadcopter would likely be less capable: as a WAG, cruise speed of 70 mph and range of 100 miles.
Obviously lead-acid batteries are out of the question, and even current lithium-ion batteries would be marginal. I think the big question is how soon Elon Musk will make his battery breakthrough research public. If it is in fact the nanoparticle-air battery concept that has recently been in the news, then we won't have a road-worthy flying car but we could have a personal quadcopter.
You can buy an autogyro now with an empty weight of 585 lb and gross weight of 910 lb, seating two and a couple of sacks of groceries, which is comparable to a ForTwo
A ForTwo weights over 2,000 pounds. I'm not going to bother reading the rest of what you wrote. When you aren't capable of googling the most basic facts about your argument it isn't worth my time.
Obviously you are not bothering to carefully read my previous posts, either.
An autogyro that seats two and can carry a couple of sacks of groceries is definitely comparable to a ForTwo. That it can do so with less than half the weight of the subcompact is a positive thing.
There are on-line courses that can help improve reading comprehension in the privacy of your own home.
That it can do so with less than half the weight of the subcompact is a positive thing.
No, it's not. There's a reason why cars are built sturdy (and therefore heavy). It's so you don't get smeared across the highway in an accident. There are reams of rules and regulations as to what sort of collisions a car must withstand to be allowed on the road. That's a good thing.
Your 1,000 aircraft won't even come close to meeting those standards. No airplane would even come close. Not even a military aircraft. Aircraft are made of paper compared to even the most poorly built automobiles.
There are on-line courses that can help improve reading comprehension in the privacy of your own home.
If I were you I'd be more concerned about basic everyday knowledge.
But anyway, you're a smart guy. Why don't you explain to me why these magical traffic-jumping aircraft don't exist? Is it because no one as smart as you has proposed it yet? Or is it a liberal conspiracy?