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Dubai Starts Tests in Bid To Become First City With Flying Taxis (reuters.com)
Dubai staged a test flight on Monday for what it said would soon be the world's first drone taxi service under an ambitious plan by the United Arab Emirates city to lead the Arab world in innovation. From a report: The flying taxi developed by German drone firm Volocopter resembles a small, two-seater helicopter cabin topped by a wide hoop studded with 18 propellers. It was unmanned for its maiden test run in a ceremony arranged for Dubai Crown Prince Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed. Meant to fly without remote control guidance and with a maximum flight duration of 30 minutes, it comes with plenty of fail-safes in case of trouble: back-up batteries, rotors and, for a worst case scenario, a couple of parachutes.
Ejecting any part of the vehicle is going to be a problem for people on the ground.
I suppose that won't really matter if the only people on the ground are the worker classes.
The technology is apparently here to support this vehicle.
Which costs $350,000 and can carry 160 kg a maximum distance of 27 km at 50 km/h (that is 350 lb, 17 miles, and 42 MPH to those using pre-1795 measuring systems) and takes 2 hours to fully charge.
With a charge time:flight time ratio of 2:1 you could get in 8 hours of flight a day, around the clock, or about 400 km total travel distance. If used as a short range shuttle over a congested city center you might get in up to forty 10 km trips a day, maybe ~10,000 in a year. Looks like this could be a profitable service with a not-astronomical fare price.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
I am puzzled though about what gets "separated" here.
The rotor heads are attached to the parachute so that they land safely to be reused on the next taxi. i.e.: the passenger compartment falls to the ground and erupts in a Li-Poly fireball.