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Uber Shows Its Flying Car Prototype (cnbc.com)
Uber has unveiled its "flying car" concept aircraft at its second annual Uber Elevate Summit, which showcases prototypes for its fleet of airborne taxis. From a report: The flying cars, which the company hopes to introduce to riders in two to five years, will conduct vertical takeoffs and landings from skyports, air stations on rooftops or the ground. Ultimately, company officials say these skyports will be equipped to handle 200 takeoffs and landings an hour, or one every 24 seconds. At first, the flying cars will be piloted, but the company aims for the aircraft to fly autonomously. The prototypes look more like drones than helicopters, with four rotors on wings. Company officials say that will make them safer than choppers, which operate on one rotor. They'll fly 1,000 to 2,000 feet above ground and will be quieter than a helicopter, producing half the noise of a truck driving past a house.
Uber has unveiled its "flying car" concept aircraft at its second annual Uber Elevate Summit, which showcases prototypes for its fleet of airborne taxis.
A flying car is not the same thing as an air taxi. A flying car is a road going car that can also get airborne. An air taxi is an aircraft which is used to taxi people between airports/heliports. This is the later. It has no ability to traverse roads and therefore is not a car. You could in principle use a flying car as a taxi but since flying cars are not practical because... physics, it's a moot issue.
Can we please drop the idiotic notion of a flying car? Unless someone invents something equivalent to Tony Stark's arc reactor it will not be possible to have a flying car that is anything more than a fragile toy. No power source we possess or are in any danger of developing has sufficient power to weight ratio to change this fact. Flying cars are a stupid idea for a lot of reasons but this one fact alone is sufficient to demonstrate that fact.
Frankly if I was an Uber investor (I'm not) I'd be pissed they are wasting money on this sort of stupid stuff when they are losing money at a breathtaking clip with no signs of stopping or obvious path to profiability.
There are sooo many reasons why Uber is out of their minds with this "pie in the sky" idea.
First off, as others pointed out, this isn't a car. No way it's going to take to the roads.
Second, if they thought the rules for driving where complex and exacting, the rules for flying are more so.
Third, automating a passenger carrying flying machine with sufficient fail safes to satisfy the FAA is going to be a seriously expensive project that's going to take YEARS of work just to document and get a whole bunch of laws and regulations changed to allow.
Fourth, you will need a horde of A&P certified mechanics to maintain these flying machines and do the required safety checks within the required time frames. These guys and gals don't come cheap and the local auto shop won't be good enough.
Finally, finding pilots who are qualified to fly passengers around for money in a helicopter is going to be very expensive. We have a grave pilot shortage in this country now, and given the costs and time frames required to move new pilots though the training, Uber doesn't have a snowballs chance of hiring enough pilots for even a small fleet of these things.
I conclude that Uber is dreaming. This is nothing more than pie in the sky pipe dreams by idiots who have no clue how they are going to do this. Dream on boys, let me know when you have a business plan I can laugh at.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
That video is kind of disconcerting to me... the takeoff and landing point is the same spot. I'm sure it's not hard to fix, but using the same takeoff and landing point is sort of encouraging mid-air collisions. It clearly assumes all vehicles communicating their position with each other, which breaks when multiple competitors enter the space. Also, the vehicles are shown kind of round-robin-ing for the passengers to unload/board, but there are lots of use cases that will break this: 1) old people, people with disabilities and users with cargo could break the timing of the system 2) if this thing takes off (pun intended) then Uber won't be the only provider wanting to use the space, meaning that Lyft will want to compete for rides in the same areas, sort of replicating the type of chaos already seen with taxi queues and Uber/Lyft lines we currently see at large hotels and major airports. If only they had a way to control flight traffic locally to prevent collisions, and use a safe landing area that is far enough away from the passenger loading area to keep waiting passengers safe, and perhaps provide a nice structure to wait in, to keep passengers comfortable and out of the weather, then they could assign specific boarding areas or "gates" to each flight so that users knew where to be and at what time, so they could board the correct flight... oh wait. That's an airport.
Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
The scenarios where autopilot is safe are relatively specific. For example, you can't autopilot at 500ft through Manhattan.
Additionally, for a landing area to be able to land and be clear in 24 seconds, that goal implies a bit of crowding of the area.
Those exceptional scenarios are common enough that the ambition for fully autonomous aircraft for people without aviation training may be a bit much to do.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Flying when all the hardware is working correctly, is very safe.
Safe, until there's any sort of failure or accident. Then you are dead.