Ford and University of Michigan Study Whether Flying Cars Would be Better For Environment (detroitnews.com)

Ford and the University of Michigan undertook a study to see just how efficient vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) vehicles would be when compared to both internal combustion cars and electric cars. From a report: The study found that these flying electric vehicles, while not suitable for short commutes, could play a "niche role in sustainable mobility for longer trips." Flying cars could also be valuable mobility options for congested cities as part of a ride-share taxi service, according to the study published Tuesday in Nature Communications. "With these VTOLs, there is an opportunity to mutually align the sustainability and business cases," Akshat Kasliwal, one of the authors of the study and a grad student at the School for Environment and Sustainability, said in a statement. "Not only is high passenger occupancy better for emissions, it also favors the economics of flying cars. Further, consumers could be incentivized to share trips, given the significant time savings from flying versus driving." The sustainability study, the first ever conducted for flying cars, comes as the automotive industry at large is focused heavily on autonomous and electric vehicles. Much of this focus is driven by emission regulation and a need to alleviate growing congestion problems in dense urban areas.

Comments

Better for their funding, yes

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell does this have to do with anything more than finding grants?

Re:Better for their funding, yes

[gweihir]

There are a lot of scientists with low or lacking ethics. They believe because they are scientists they can only do good and hence doing anything for grants is quite acceptable. Incidentally, you will also find quite a few that fake results and publish outright lies in this group.

Re:Better for their funding, yes

[Ol Olsoc]

There are a lot of scientists with low or lacking ethics. They believe because they are scientists they can only do good and hence doing anything for grants is quite acceptable. Incidentally, you will also find quite a few that fake results and publish outright lies in this group.

Much better to trust politicians.

Re:Better for their funding, yes

[Cmdln Daco]

At least politicians figured out that when they graduate, they are supposed to go out and find something off the campus to do with their lives.

Re:Better for their funding, yes

[gweihir]

Hahaha, no. Just do not blindly trust things a scientist says, verify against common sense, scientific basics and genral consensus in the respective field. Yes, that takes work. Be very careful when they give opinions though (not "expert opinions"). That is a codeword for "I am going to forget that I am a scientist now". Also, the worst liars usually get exposed after a while, even if the damage is often already done when they do: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

Re:Better for their funding, yes

[gweihir]

Indeed. There are easier victims off-campus.

Re:Better for their funding, yes

[Hognoxious]

Or priests. They might not be infallible but they work for someone who is, and that's the next best thing!

Re:Better for their funding, yes

[Anonymous Coward]

everything is better with a FLYING car :-) especially if it is a DeLorian

Re:Better for their funding, yes

[Sir_Eptishous]

There are a lot of scientists with low or lacking ethics. They believe because they are scientists they can only do good and hence doing anything for grants is quite acceptable. Incidentally, you will also find quite a few that fake results and publish outright lies in this group.

Much better to trust politicians.

No, business leaders are the ones to trust.

Re:Better for their funding, yes

[Ol Olsoc]

There are a lot of scientists with low or lacking ethics. They believe because they are scientists they can only do good and hence doing anything for grants is quite acceptable. Incidentally, you will also find quite a few that fake results and publish outright lies in this group.

Much better to trust politicians.

No, business leaders are the ones to trust.

Banks are a specially honest subgroup of business leaders, making used car dealers look like saints.

Nice thing is, so easy to make routes

[SuperKendall]

Flying cars make sense to me as point to point between hubs, with regular flying cars to take.

Tunnels make a lot of sense for that as well, but it's a lot quicker and easier to stand up transfer hubs and start flying craft between them...

I've noticed in almost every city I've been in, that it is absolutely terrible to get from one side to another if you aren't along a major road or subway route on both ends. Flying cabs/buses would be a great way to solve that for a limited set of people.

On a side note, also can't have protestors messing with tunnels or aerial traffic, unlike bus routes and roads.

Re:Nice thing is, so easy to make routes

[hawguy]

On a side note, also can't have protestors messing with tunnels or aerial traffic, unlike bus routes and roads.

Seems like it'd be even easier for protestors to disrupt aerial traffic than road traffic with a drone fleet - possibly autonomous to prevent jamming.

Re:Nice thing is, so easy to make routes

[The Grim Reefer]

Seems like it'd be even easier for protestors to disrupt aerial traffic than road traffic with a drone fleet - possibly autonomous to prevent jamming.

People holding signs and yelling at passing cars is little more than a nuisance and may get some peoples attention. Sending up a swarm of drones is not going to make people sympathetic to a cause. At that point it goes from a protest to endangering lives. Which won't get the kind of attention any non-insane group is looking for.

Re: Nice thing is, so easy to make routes

[Anonymous Coward]

The drones don't have to cause a hazard. They could trail banners, blink lights, emit colored smoke etc. to draw attention.

Re:Nice thing is, so easy to make routes

[nospam007]

"Flying cars make sense to me as point to point between hubs, with regular flying cars to take."

In a few years, the people who still have to drive to their jobs, will be replaced by robots and/or AI, the cars will drive themselves and if you don't have to drive to work (and shopping will be completely dead by then), so where would one drive to other than to the airport to get the hell out?

Re:Nice thing is, so easy to make routes

[RockDoctor]

How would it endanger lives? Once the car's autopilot (you think they're going to let people without a pilots license and a few hundred hours logged "on type" actually fly paying passengers in these things?) realises that the local air traffic control is not giving a good description of traffic, the aircraft will perform a safe landing at the nearest appropriate point. Probably an under-used bit of road.

Human over-ride would probably be permitted, on presentation of the pilot's license (biometric) and validation of her logbook for this particular model of vehicle. After all, that is how the regulations for other forms of commercial flight work, and what is different about this form of flight?

We're currently going through one of those periodic bursts of angst because a football player got killed when being flown commercially by a pilot without a commercial license, in an aircraft whose owners had not licensed it for commercial use (which has a higher maintenance and inspection load than for private use). Loosening commercial pilot licensing requirements is an idea that is going to fly much worse than a Mythbuster's lead balloon at the moment.

100 million flying lawn mowers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because noise pollution doesn't count.

Let's make this a real study...

[msauve]

Give me a flying car (as promised by Popular Mechanics decades ago), and you can compare my use with that of all those lowly road-dwellers.

Re:Let's make this a real study...

[Anonymous Coward]

Popular Mechanics is pure boolsheet. Read "Debunking 9/11 Debunking" by Dr. David Ray Griffin.

Re: Let's make this a real study...

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with flying cars is exactly the same as with regular cars: there's no way for me to have one without extending the option to every other fucker on the road.

Once you think about what that means, it pretty much disappears from the wish list.

Flying While Texting

[Zorro]

The Loss of life will be catastrophic. It will also be real entertaining to watch the black box video of the last seconds on Youtube.

Re:Flying While Texting

[gweihir]

It will not. The average person is barely capable to learn to drive, how on earth would they be able to learn to fly?

Re:Flying While Texting

[Ol Olsoc]

The Loss of life will be catastrophic. It will also be real entertaining to watch the black box video of the last seconds on Youtube.

That's why it is better for the environment. A lot less people.

Re: Flying While Texting

[K. S. Kyosuke]

They would not, this is what you have computers for. Fortunately there's no quirky pedestrians in the air to deal with.

Re: Flying While Texting

[gweihir]

Just my point. Texting would be a non-issue.

Re: Flying While Texting

[currently_awake]

Bird strikes are a major issue for civil air travel. Flying cars must be automated, even a good pilot can't fly in swarms through city streets safely. You would have to be watching in 6 directions at the same time.

Re:Flying While Texting

[RockDoctor]

Corollary - people who have invested in the future of the gene pool will not be allowed to use flying cars.

That's going to make the ride home from getting lucky at a party suck. You get breakfast, walk down to the street, hail a flying taxi, get into it, fly half way home and the taxi dumps you unceremoniously at the side of the road as the sperm fuses with the egg. And you'll never use a flying car again. And all because the condom ripped, or whatever.

Re:Flying While Texting

[squiggleslash]

If they create manual flying cars, then sure, but I seriously doubt that'll ever be a thing. I suspect flying cars - if they ever become mainstream - will be 100% computerized.

Re:Flying While Texting

[Ol Olsoc]

Corollary - people who have invested in the future of the gene pool will not be allowed to use flying cars.

That's going to make the ride home from getting lucky at a party suck. You get breakfast, walk down to the street, hail a flying taxi, get into it, fly half way home and the taxi dumps you unceremoniously at the side of the road as the sperm fuses with the egg. And you'll never use a flying car again. And all because the condom ripped, or whatever.

Seriously though, unless these VTOL's are going to have an exceptional glide path - think sailplane numbers or better, they will eventually end up killing a lot of people.

Because they so far resemble drones, and my experience with drones is that if there is a problem, they instantly become a rock. If they have wings, they better be longer than that artist's conception in TFA, because that will be less of a glide path than say, the Space Shuttle, which is a well aimed rock. Imagine if you will, someone picking someone up after a night at a nice New York restaraunt. Assuming there are multiple spots for the droneplane to land (New York Real Estate prices anyone) if the drone plane suffers any anomaly on the vertical ascent before it gets enough forward velocity to avoid a stall, it will enter rock mode. New York being what it is, the areas where people wealthy enough to afford this means we might be looking at up to 1000 feet before the droneplane can even begin to enter horizontal flight mode. So we're looking at dead rich people, dead mix of people on the ground, likely building damage, and loss of real estate to accomodate landing and takeoff.

This whole idea of urban flying cars is as well thought out as putting screen doors on submarines.

Power stops = you're dead

[Tough Love]

Might not matter much to a commando or drug lord, but for an insurance salesman... these things will have a 100% fatality rate per power failure.

Re:Power stops = you're dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Parachutes Baby, Parachutes!!!

Re:Power stops = you're dead

[Xenx]

Just isn't true. First, rates would just go up on them to compensate. If the rates were too high, they wouldn't operate. Second, to keep rates the same, the fatality rate would only have to be on par with our current modes of transportation.

Re:Power stops = you're dead

[hawguy]

Might not matter much to a commando or drug lord, but for an insurance salesman... these things will have a 100% fatality rate per power failure.

Aside from the obvious solution of parachutes, these drones would have multiple redundant systems, including power. So with 16 small propellers, there could be 4 completely separate power and control systems, if you lose one, you only lose 25% lift, so you might need to make an emergency landing (and maybe it will be a little rough), but you won't necessarily die due to a simple electrical/mechanical failure.

Re:Power stops = you're dead

[sexconker]

Ah yes, carry quadruple your fuel / battery. That'll be efficient!

Re:Power stops = you're dead

[Tough Love]

Aside from the obvious solution of parachutes...

Obvious to who? You do know that a parachute big enough to land an entire vehicle and payload safely is large, and requires much more vertical altitude to open than your garden variety base jumping rig. And do you think a parachute is reliable like a doorbell? No, they flap and swirl and have vortexes, occasional line tangles... a parachute is not like a doorbell. You can't reliably predict how much vertical altitude it needs to open. Good luck trusting your life to a parachute at 300 feet and falling fast.

Also, where is your parachute going to land? Are you driving your flying care over buildings, wires, water, trees, busy roads? Is it windy? Dark? Parachute, yah right, that's the ticket to surviving your flying car power outage.

Splat calculator says you have 5 seconds to live.

Re: Power stops = you're dead

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Why would you need to quadruple those? Makes no sense.

Re: Power stops = you're dead

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm assuming that was a joke. You can always make more batteries by dividing your existing ones. If your electric car has a single 400-cell battery, you can turn it into 4 100-cell batteries. Instead of supplying 400 Amps across 4 motors, you'd have 4 batteries each supplying 100 Amps to each of the 4 motors.

dom

Re:Power stops = you're dead

[hawguy]

Aside from the obvious solution of parachutes...

Obvious to who? You do know that a parachute big enough to land an entire vehicle and payload safely is large, and requires much more vertical altitude to open than your garden variety base jumping rig. And do you think a parachute is reliable like a doorbell? No, they flap and swirl and have vortexes, occasional line tangles... a parachute is not like a doorbell. You can't reliably predict how much vertical altitude it needs to open. Good luck trusting your life to a parachute at 300 feet and falling fast.

Also, where is your parachute going to land? Are you driving your flying care over buildings, wires, water, trees, busy roads? Is it windy? Dark? Parachute, yah right, that's the ticket to surviving your flying car power outage.

Splat calculator says you have 5 seconds to live.

You seem to misunderstand -- the parachute isn't meant for normal landings, it's a last-ditch effort to save your life in the event your personal helicopter has a catastrophic failure.

Hitting the ground is unavoidable, but having a parachute can make the difference between surviving and not.

It's not like the it's a new idea, some aircraft already have emergency parachutes:

https://www.airspacemag.com/da...

[ a study ]... found a 13-fold decrease in the odds of a fatality when the Cirrus Airframe Parachute System (CAPS, developed with Popov’s company, BRS Aerospace) was deployed in an accident, versus when it was not.

Re:Power stops = you're dead

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to read up on autorotation

Engine failure is a known issue in non-electric vehicles.

Re:Power stops = you're dead

[currently_awake]

Using a gas generator like in an airbag would ensure deployment before impact. Having crumple zones and a max allowed flying altitude would complete the safety picture. You don't need 4x the battery power for redundancy, you only need sufficient redundant power to land.

Re:Power stops = you're dead

[Riceballsan]

The point isn't 4x the batteries/motors. the idea is 4 smaller batteries instead of 1 big one. Then it can have partial failures instead of all or nothing.

Re:Power stops = you're dead

[Tough Love]

You seem to misunderstand -- the parachute isn't meant for normal landings, it's a last-ditch effort to save your life in the event your personal helicopter has a catastrophic failure ...[ a study ]... found a 13-fold decrease in the odds of a fatality when the Cirrus Airframe Parachute System (CAPS, developed with Popov’s company, BRS Aerospace) was deployed in an accident, versus when it was not.

"last time I checked, the paper has not been cited by anybody." Whoops! Smells like unreproducible research.

Look how long the lines are on that huge parachute, nearly 100 feet. Expecting to get line stretch (beginning of deceleration) in less than 500 feet is pure fantasy. So, below 500 feet you're dead. Which will be the normal operating altitude of a flying car.

Re:Power stops = you're dead

[Tough Love]

Autorotation in a quadcopter? Guffaw!

Re:Power stops = you're dead

[hawguy]

You seem to misunderstand -- the parachute isn't meant for normal landings, it's a last-ditch effort to save your life in the event your personal helicopter has a catastrophic failure ...[ a study ]... found a 13-fold decrease in the odds of a fatality when the Cirrus Airframe Parachute System (CAPS, developed with Popov’s company, BRS Aerospace) was deployed in an accident, versus when it was not.

"last time I checked, the paper has not been cited by anybody." Whoops! Smells like unreproducible research.

Look how long the lines are on that huge parachute, nearly 100 feet. Expecting to get line stretch (beginning of deceleration) in less than 500 feet is pure fantasy. So, below 500 feet you're dead. Which will be the normal operating altitude of a flying car.

For someone that insists on peer reviewed papers, you sure know a lot about how imaginary flying cars will operate. So I'm going to need a citation for this 500 ft operating ceiling.

Re:Power stops = you're dead

[Tough Love]

If you manage to survive to 1000' without needing your parachute maybe you're good :-)

For the rest of us, the pandemonium should be entertaining.

Flying cars great for global warming

[Megahard]

Because then we can fly over all the flooded highways.

Corporate propaganda

[Anonymous Coward]

We already know flying carpets are carbon-neutral!

Yes

[The Evil Atheist]

By reducing the population significantly.

Autogyros Are the only way I see feasible

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see flying cars as feasible outside of autogyros. Autogyros have very short to no runways for taking off or landing like helicopter, and when losing power can glide down to a small patch safely. In that sense, it's beyond ideal for computerized control with no major infrastructure changes. It's also fuel efficient.

OTOH, it can't handle high speeds. Probably can go 150mph but not much faster. But since you can go straight lines with no slow downs, it should be ideal as regional buses. It would not be something to do cross country trips in.

1930s Autogyro Documentary

When the US Postal Service used autogyros.

Rotodyne, a british autogyro "bus" carrying over 50 passengers. Killed in prototype due to noise, otherwise exceeded all expectations afaik.

No, they would not be

[youngone]

Flying cars would be a disaster for the environment, as they will set large areas on fire when they crash, as they will regularly.
I suppose flying cars will help keep the population down though, so that might be a win for the environment.

me no understand

[fluffernutter]

I'm no physicist, but I just can't fathom how a vehicle that has to fight gravity for the entire duration of the trip could ever be more efficient than something that rolls along the ground.

Re:me no understand

[ShanghaiBill]

I just can't fathom how a vehicle that has to fight gravity for the entire duration of the trip could ever be more efficient than something that rolls along the ground.

Current aircraft are twice as efficient as a single passenger car in fuel per passenger-mile.

You need to learn to fathom better.

Re: me no understand

[Anonymous Coward]

Just looked it up, aircraft mpg is surprising good, 0.6 mpg for passenger jet, and like 10 mpg for helicopter. Of course the elephant in the room is momentum, which our retarded highway system doesnt maintain but could with smart tech communicating with cars. Trains are classic example at huge efficiency through conserving momentum. Also this idea is generally questionable due to constant roadside breakdowns which would be crashes w/o people doing aircraft level maintenance.

Re:me no understand

[Anonymous Coward]

You are talking about airliners, not general aviation aircraft. When we compare the energy consumption per passenger/km of a full airliner with a full bus, the bus wins.

Re:me no understand

[Anonymous Coward]

And electric bullet trains are 3-5 times as efficient as current airliners in fuel per passenger mile.

Re:me no understand

[gweihir]

It cannot, unless you fiddle with the conditions and make the comparison extremely unfair. Basically, you need to lie directly to make such a claim.

Re:me no understand

[gweihir]

And then you do that comparison for a single person driving 5 miles to go shopping and your argument just looks exceptionally clueless.

Re:me no understand

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if you are travelling at 800kph at 30,000 feet.

Re:me no understand

[Anonymous Coward]

What if your commute could be 10 minutes instead of 1 hour?
How much fuel is wasted at suboptimal speeds?

Re: me no understand

[Anonymous Coward]

As opposed to the same person taking an auto gyro to the same shop? Not seeing it.

Re:me no understand

[Waccoon]

I'm pretty sure a city bus will destroy any aircraft in fuel per passenger-mile... and they arguably have more leg room to boot.

Re:me no understand

[Anonymous Coward]

Current aircraft are twice as efficient as a single passenger car in fuel per passenger-mile.

Presumably the "flying car" referred to by TFA is of a similar passenger capacity to existing terrestrial automobiles or between 2 and 15 seats depending upon configuration. Even small commercial airliners seat at least 40 passengers and 150 or more is typical, which makes your comparison unfair. The fair comparison would be the small business jet, which is still being generous because most business jets would carry at least 6 passengers, not including the pilot and copilot. However, even if we allow that the fuel mileage in the business jet for those 8 persons, 6 passengers plus the pilot and copilot, it's still way worse than it would be for 6 passengers plus the pilot and copilot riding in a typical passenger van. Flying is much more energy intensive than driving on the ground. This is why we see practical electric passenger vehicles and not so much practical electric passenger aircraft.

Re: me no understand

[Anonymous Coward]

Only per passenger. However, it is much higher if you make a comparison of an airplane vs a car of the same size.

Re:me no understand

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, for journeys of several hundred miles, with 300 people packed together.

For short journeys with few passengers, the economics are completely different.

Re:me no understand

[thegarbz]

So what you're saying is that I win if I carry 3 passengers, or flying personal cars lose if they don't carry 150?

I am going to make a prediction here... I think you can guess which way the study will go based on your own assertion.

Re:me no understand

[Anonymous Coward]

Physicist here. Try this:

Lighter-than-air vehicle. Favorable wind.

Much more efficient than spherical cows.

Re:me no understand

[Anonymous Coward]

I own one of the most fuel efficient 4 seat aircraft on the market (a Mooney for those who want to google about them). MPG doesn't exactly correlate as winds change the operating environment significantly. I get a typical 165-180 MPH cruise, with take off and landing making my averages for a trip work out to about 140 MPH. With the same takeoff (high burn rate) and landing (low burn rate) factored in then I see nearly 10 gallon per hour of fuel used (9.1 per hour in cruise). Depending on how you factor it for average or 'highway best use case', I have between 14 and 19.8 MPG (if there is no headwind).

As I also own a Jetta and get over 40 MPG from that and even in the high 30's in town, I will easily call BS on this "flying can be more efficient than cars for the average personal transport vehicle". if I have to travel someplace over 2 hour drive away then the plane makes sense because it buys me time. if I travel someplace that is a 20 hour drive an 6 hour flight then I save money on a hotel and some meals on the road and *maybe* come out even on costs. But the reason really is mobility and time saving. Assuming the weather cooperates.*

Big assumption. (If you have time to spare, go by air)

Re:me no understand

[AmiMoJo]

Only for larger aircraft. A Cesna 172 only gets about 18 mpg (15 mp US gallons).

Re:me no understand

[squiggleslash]

It's not impossible, just difficult. The device would have to save enough energy by, for example, going in a straight line without constantly slowing down and speeding up, to make up for the fact it's also fighting gravity. And bear in mind the experiment will be considered a success if an average flying vehicle can beat an average single family motor vehicle - the rise of SUVs and light trucks as a means of primary transportation in the US means that that's actually much easier than it sounds. A Cessna does about 15mpg. An SUV somewhere around 20. But the Cessna can go in a straight line.

Now I'm thinking about it, I can think of multiple other strategies, from using updrafts, to using a hybrid lighter-than-air design, where you could minimize the energy spent lifting the vehicle up. I'm not sure how practical these are, but the efficiencies of, say, airships have been well known for a long time.

Re:me no understand

[squiggleslash]

Also while I'm at it, a flying car does not need anything like the amount of land based infrastructure to support it that a regular car does. And that, ultimately, might be where the environmental savings are realized, especially as energy could, potentially, be obtained from renewable resources.

Re:me no understand

[fluffernutter]

But a flying car isn't a flying car if it has wings, that's an airplane. A flying car will need to be something more like a large drone.

Re:me no understand

[Anonymous Coward]

It feels unlikely to me too, but if you start to make several assumptions, the numbers do improve. Assumptions include:

      Less time stuck in traffic (which is incredibly inefficient for ICE vehicles).

      More carpooling (unlikely everyone owns such a vehicle so more room for ridesharing, less traffic so people are more willing to take it to shorten their commute, etc).

      If it becomes commonplace, may freeways heading into the cities can be reduced in size (roads are expensive and I presume repaving them every year or two I presume is rather polluting).

Re:me no understand

[Chrontius]

Drag - or the lack thereof.

Rolling resistance and air resistance increase nonlinearly. And when you take stop-and-go traffic into account, I imagine that also works in aircrafts' favor.

Re:me no understand

[gweihir]

Indeed. The original article sounds like a student-thesis gone wrong.

Suitable

[fahrbot-bot]

The study found that these flying electric vehicles, while not suitable for short commutes, could play a "niche role in sustainable mobility for longer trips."

I imagine the batteries would prefer it the other way around.

Ummmm, seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

The fuel economy of a small plane is roughly on par with a Hummer (and frankly I'm shocked it's even as good as that).

Re:Ummmm, seriously?

[jonwil]

I have no idea how reliable the numbers are but the information out there suggests something like the Terrafugia Transition will get 35mpg in car mode and 21.4mpg in flight, a fair bit better than the 15 or so mpg I see quoted for the Hummer.

And I bet the Rotax 912 engine they are using is probably not the most fuel efficient 4-cylinder engine on the face of the planet (meaning there is possibly room for improvement on those figures)

Re:Ummmm, seriously?

[gweihir]

That is basically because the plane is really light and cannot carry a lot of weight. The hummer is a small truck, on the other hand.

Re:Ummmm, seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you perhaps acquired a clue somehow then you would have some idea that the numbers are not reliable enough to require the use of decimal points.

Of course it would be good for the environment!

[Locke2005]

Reducing the human population is always good for the environment! And those things would be falling out of the sky all over the place!

physics mocks you

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, just a few issues
1) anything that's roadworthy is way too heavy. SR-22 MGTOW is, IIRC, 3000 lbs. Tesla Model S curb weight is 4300 lbs, before lift fans and reality distortion are applied, and add a pair of fatties as passengers.
2) Altitude. whole aircraft parachutes require about 900 AGL to safely recover the aircraft without forward momentum. Power loss will be at max power ... in the vertical climb or descent. So, the problem is going to occur under parachute deployment altitude.
3) Rockets ... the parachutes are extracted by rocket. If one lift fan fails, the thing is going to start to tumble, and the rocket will deploy the wrong direction. Not a problem if you're a few thousand feet above the ground, there's time, but a big issue if you're close to the ground. Also, in an urban environment, the rocket is going to be a huge issue for whomever is using the lane above you that you just shot a rocket and parachute into. P_death goes up hugely when someone flies into your parachute or shoots a rocket into your aircraft.
4) Weight. The parachute, rocket, structure to hold the parachute and rocket, and crush zones below you are a major issue. Weight is the enemy or aircraft, and assuming current sci-fi hopes for battery density, there's probably still not enough payload to carry an extra half a ton of parachute, rocket, structure and crush structure in the seats. Plausible to put the parachute on the ass end and re-use the forward crumple zones and air bags, but that then has you punching through roofs instead of crashing into them.

nonsense

[sdinfoserv]

from a pure "sustainability" perspective, it takes far more energy to lift off the ground vertically and fly then any rolling vehicle.
secondly " high passenger occupancy " aka "buses" use less energy per occupant - when full - then single owner vehicles. Obviously this is true no matter if the "bus" rolls or flies , the more occupants, the better.
It seems the study, likely commissioned to push "Detroit", as an agenda also pushed by Detroit.
Just imagine what would happen if a City owned flying "bus" malfunctioned and crashed killing 50+ people on the bus, and 100 more on the City Street it crashed into. Flights would end instantly and permanently. Flying "cars", "buses" or personal transporters are pure fantasy as daily urban commuters for the common folk.

Re:nonsense

[gweihir]

The thing is that if you compare a heavy car with a single occupant and very light plane with multiple people, you may actually end up at numbers where flying seems to be competitive. Of course, in any fair comparison this is utter nonsense, as there are very light cars as well that can get a _lot_ more mileage out of the fuel.

Re:nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

Just imagine what would happen if a City owned flying "bus" malfunctioned and crashed killing 50+ people on the bus, and 100 more on the City Street it crashed into. Flights would end instantly and permanently. Flying "cars", "buses" or personal transporters are pure fantasy as daily urban commuters for the common folk.

That hasn't happened with guns yet.

Re:nonsense

[Cmdln Daco]

Most of the people killed with guns in civilian settings have racial characteristics such that that the people in power don't care about them.

Re:nonsense

[Hognoxious]

Just imagine what would happen if a City owned flying "bus" malfunctioned and crashed killing 50+ people on the bus, and 100 more on the City Street it crashed into.

This place would be covered in posts from c6gunner saying it was pilot error?

Re:nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

secondly

Trying to speak simple sentences in basic English... really reveals the retards, One doesn't quite realize how many of them are out there... until you shine the metaphorical flashlight around and see reflecting back at you from every direction the ominous glint of... retardation.

I'm literally shaking right now

[Anonymous Coward]

Who comes up with this shit?

Re:I'm literally shaking right now

[gweihir]

People without morals that want grant money or took money to come up with a way to justify a result given by the one paying the study. The scum of the scum of the scientific world. Unfortunately, there people are not rare.

They would if they were electric flying cars

[WillAffleckUW]

Actually, BC is converting its local planes to electric planes, so if these were electric flying cars, charged from renewable energy, they would be more environmentally friendly. Private jets are about 20x worse for the environment than flying first class in one of the worst passenger jets, though.

Re: They would if they were electric flying cars

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing with batteries can ever be sustainable. Batteries, even rechargeable ones are not fully recyclable. If you want environment friendly transportation we should go back to horse drawn carriages

Re:They would if they were electric flying cars

[RespekMyAthorati]

Actually, BC is converting its local planes to electric planes

No, they are planning to do that, just as soon as electric planes are actually feasible.
And that won't be until after battery technology improves the power/weight ratio a lot.

It would be great

[Anonymous Coward]

If any of these geniuses would put that funding into something that actually exists. It'a akin to, 'Was Nessie Jack The Ripper? Let's find out!'. Millennial science is a bad, bad joke.

Re:It would be great

[Cmdln Daco]

Ford is involved. This study will make a nice diorama display at the Ford Museum in Dearborn.

Flying pigs

[Anonymous Coward]

or toasters (kosher) would be better!

Re: 16 small propellers

[Anonymous Coward]

So with 16 small propellers, there could be 4 completely separate power and control systems.

Maybe they'll just start with off the shelf racing quad-copters. Tie 4 of those together to make a bigger quad of quads that can actually carry a suitcase with 16 small quad-copters. Tie 4 of those to make a version to carry a single human passenger + luggage, 4 of those for a family car, 4 of those to replace a van, and 4 of those to replace a bus.

"It's quad-copters all the way down."

Of course not.

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to use most of your fuel just staying in the air.

Maybe for mass transit. Perhaps state to state and city to city. You could have special areas to 'fly' in and out of.
Call them airports...

Oh baby a triple

[Anonymous Coward]

Three non sequiturs consecutively, it would be impressive if it was deliberate

Commuting Must End

[kenwd0elq]

Everybody wants a way to commute from your home to your office easier and with less environmental impact - but why commute at all? For most office workers, the work can come to you by telecommuting. Work at home, virtually. Get rid of offices, and convert them to apartments. Really high-speed internet will allow 75% of all office work to be done remotely.

Construction work and medical care may be the only major industries immune from telecommuting.

Re:Commuting Must End

[currently_awake]

The service industry (waitress etc) needs physical presence. Since tele-commuting means exporting jobs to the third world the service industry will make up 75% of our jobs.

FAA likey will make taxis hard to pull off and

[Joe_Dragon]

FAA likely will make taxis hard to pull off and battery seizing will an big buffer on top of posted max range.

How could it possibly be better for the environmen

[artemis67]

You might have shorter travel times, but flying cars will use a lot more energy to stay aloft (versus a car that is always supported by the ground).

Also, each advance in the field of transportation comes with a significant increase in the number and distance of trips taken by people. Flying cars will get you to your destinations faster, so people will be traveling a lot more to destinations that were too far away to drive. This will especially be true of people commuting to work. A two hour car commute, one way, is unthinkable for most people, but if a flying car can shorten that to an hour, then a lot mroe people would be willing to make that commute.

On the plus side, flying cars would make rural locations a lot mroe accessible, for home owners and businesses.

The ICE is only around 20% efficient

[Locutus]

Internal Combustion Engines are so inefficient. So electric 'anything' has that going for it.

Combining that with the fact that there are no stop lights, stop signs, sharp left/right turns, traffic in the sky two dimension rolling mobility just doesn't fly.

LoB

Coming next

[jlv]

Next year they'll release a study on how using a (Star Trek) transporter is even better for the environment.

Who cares that there is no such technology right now...

More dangerous IS better

[Anonymous Coward]

Less living humans is better for the environment.

U kan't fool me brah

[Anonymous Coward]

Too late, bruh, I've already read "Debunking Debunking 9/11 Debunking" by Dr. Constance Spiracy. PM is total BS tho.

here's a problem

[idji]

Flying cars may one day be great, but we won't be able to rely on them. In heavy winds, rain or snow they will be grounded and people will have to use alternative systems.