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Are We Getting Close To Flying Taxis? (knpr.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from public news station KNPR about how close weare flying taxi services:
The dream of flying cars is as at least as old as the automobile itself. Bell, which makes attack helicopters for the U.S. Navy, is working on this new project with another high-profile partner, Uber. The prototype, the Bell Nexus, was unveiled earlier this year. Boeing and Airbus also have prototypes of these flying cars in the works. Uber has become the face of the aerial mobility movement as it has the most public campaign touting its work so far. Elon Musk says he'll get us to Mars. Uber says it'll get a millennial from San Francisco to San Jose in 15 minutes flat (instead of the two-hour slog in morning traffic). And its timeline for this flying taxi that does not yet exist is 2023...
NASA is another Uber partner. While Jaiwon Shin, NASA's associate administrator for the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, thinks Uber is being a little bullish -- he'd put the timeline further out, to the mid-2020s -- Shin says it's close. "Convergence of many different technologies are maturing to the level that now aviation can benefit to put these things together," he said. The batteries that power electric cars can evolve further, to power flight. Companies can stockpile and pool data, and build artificial intelligence to take over air traffic control, managing the thousands of drones and taxis in the air.
And Uber, his partner, is really well-connected. While fighting the legacy taxi industry, Uber made so many government and lobbyist contacts, that that Rolodex can help grease the wheels -- or wings.
"While no flying taxi exists yet, Uber has dared to estimate the 'near-term' cost of that San Francisco to San Jose trip: $43," the article reports -- suggesting that could create a new division in society.
"With flying cars, the haves can escape to the air and leave the have-nots forgotten in their potholes."
NASA is another Uber partner. While Jaiwon Shin, NASA's associate administrator for the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, thinks Uber is being a little bullish -- he'd put the timeline further out, to the mid-2020s -- Shin says it's close. "Convergence of many different technologies are maturing to the level that now aviation can benefit to put these things together," he said. The batteries that power electric cars can evolve further, to power flight. Companies can stockpile and pool data, and build artificial intelligence to take over air traffic control, managing the thousands of drones and taxis in the air.
And Uber, his partner, is really well-connected. While fighting the legacy taxi industry, Uber made so many government and lobbyist contacts, that that Rolodex can help grease the wheels -- or wings.
"While no flying taxi exists yet, Uber has dared to estimate the 'near-term' cost of that San Francisco to San Jose trip: $43," the article reports -- suggesting that could create a new division in society.
"With flying cars, the haves can escape to the air and leave the have-nots forgotten in their potholes."
And, if you ask me again in 2024, I'll say that we're probably 5 years away.
The technical issues are being chipped away but there are power and autonomy (traffic control) issues that will require decades of work before we will have practical flying taxis.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Oh god please no. Since the only way we humans can make things fly is either by blasting air downwards (think Harrier jet) or by making something that looks like a helicopter or an airplane, any flying taxi (big enough to fit a human) would mean unacceptable levels of noise pollution in cities and even in suburbs. Imagine having a helicopter landing several feet from your window while trying to sleep.
Uber says it'll get a millennial from San Francisco to San Jose in 15 minutes flat
That's great. Who's the lucky millennial?
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Realistically we'll have self-driving ground cars long before self-driving flying cars would happen. Rules of the road and concerns with ground driving are well-understood, and it's simply a matter of coding all that in. With flying cars, there are concerns that haven't been considered yet and won't be until there's a tragedy that involves multiple deaths and a huge lawsuit that shuts down the entire program. For example, if one flies into a building because its building sensor doesn't work with all-glass exteriors. Ground cars only have to follow the road and they automatically avoid driving into buildings; flying cars have no such luxury.
Once we have self-driving ground cars, traffic will start to clear up and be more tolerable besides, which will eliminate the benefits of flying cars.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
In order for a vehicle like this to be operated at a profit it must spend a very high percentage of the day "in operation". The problem with EVs (of all kinds) is that they have significant down-time whilst being recharged.
Battery packs you can swap out ad re-charge offline would totally eliminate that issue. It does increase the initial cost having to have so many battery packs and some infrastructure to change them out.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The article has many intertwined ideas that need to be separated. First, Military air taxis- The military can do what ever it wants if it's willing to take the risk. What the military does has little to no bearing on commercial carriers are allowed to do. The military doesn't work on a cost justification or profit basis
Second - There is a big difference between whats technically possible, vs whats commercially viable.
We're "close" , if not there to this being technically possible. However, for an aircraft - including electric quad type copters - to move beyond private user "experimental" designation to commercial is a huge, long, really REALLY expensive process. Remember "Uber for air planes" got slapped down hard years ago by the FAA. A private pilot is NOT a commercial pilot. This will be no different.
Given all the air checks, balances, engineers, certification of parts, rebuilds required after X hours of air time, the notion of a $43 cost per ride is nonsense.
Factor in Just 1 pigeon causing a crash over a city resulting in ground fatalities will kill the idea permanently, and might financially bankrupt what ever company is pushing this. And Cities will ban flights instantly.
Bottom line.. this is fantasy.
I haven't seen any technology that can meet reasonable noise and air blast requirements. A flying taxi is likely to need as much landing space as a small helocopter - because that is basically what it is.
Quad-copter like designs look neat, and might solve some issues, but they work exactly the same way as helicopters, by forcing air downwards.
self-flying mode sounds nice, but even a small helicopter costs several times as much as its pilot per hour.
Mass short flights with rotor technology will never materialize. Companies will build a vehicle capable of such flights, maybe even relatively safely, but they will not be allowed in cities. Short flights means low altitude. Imagine tens of thousands of these things flying at low altitudes over San Francisco. Even if you figure out virtual corridors and traffic rules, imagine having multiple highways directly over your home. Physical highways often are separated by noise and crash barriers. Unless the city moves underground, people will not accept busy highways just hundreds of feet above residential areas.
Now, if some day we invent anti-gravity, so that such taxis can silently ascend to 30,000ft for a 5 mile trip, sure, but until then, this is less feasible for mass deployment than Elon's networks of tunnels.
Because the current air traffic control system based on partitioned air space, regular routes, and tens of thousands of humans on duty 24/7 in a highly redundant system integrated with national and international weather forecasting will trivially be replaced by magic pixie dust AI at little or no cost. And it will never ever fail ever, just like commercial air travel. Just check current news for how well air transport works now.
Why is Snark Required?
Rules of the road and concerns with ground driving are well-understood, and it's simply a matter of coding all that in.
But the devil is in the details.
Though more or less understood and not impossible for our evolved-from-chimps human brain to understand, it turns out rules of road have evolved in a definitely very human-oriented way (for obvious historical reasons).
And it turns out that making sense of that isn't as straight forward as the marketing department of start-ups would like you to believe.
With flying cars, there are concerns that haven't been considered yet
On the other hand, as flying cars aren't common *yet*, we can progressively build an infrastructure that is better suited for automated flying and doesn't require reverse engineering the way the human mind see things by using complex neural nets.
See how fast autonomous cars are developing (slow, only currently in very limited testing, always with human supervisors "just in cas") vs. autonomous trains/metros/etc. (just build a purpose-specific track that has all the necessary tricks to make it easy) (see all the autonomous metros in big cities).
Depending on how it evolves, autonomous sky taxis could actually be a more plausible thing, simply because we could end up designing specially adapted "air corridors for autonomous vehicle" with all the necessary tricks.
Whereas it might turn out that having autonomous vehicle and human drive on the same road simply doesn't work, and you'd need to build a separate network of robot-friendly roads.
and won't be until there's a tragedy that involves multiple deaths and a huge lawsuit that shuts down the entire program. For example, if one flies into a building because its building sensor doesn't work with all-glass exteriors. Ground cars only have to follow the road and they automatically avoid driving into buildings; flying cars have no such luxury.
Once we have self-driving ground cars, traffic will start to clear up and be more tolerable besides, which will eliminate the benefits of flying cars.
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