They have, it's called the AW609. And like its predecessor V-22, it has crashed and killed the occupants early on and is nowhere near commercial readiness.
Uber's estimates of commercial VTOL flight on an untested airframe by 2023 is total garbage, and they have to know it. The US military has sunk $50 Billion dollars into this problem over the last 30 years and still aren't there.
My guess is that Uber simply wants to maintain some hope of future growth, particularly with their autonomous car program in shambles.
PS I sincerely hope I'm wrong.
They also benefit from future free advertising. Everytime you'll see a bit of news talking about autonomous drones, flying taxis, or the like, you can bet that the writer will mention Uber, thus giving them free Brand recognition. The same happened with Amazon's delivery drones, or Uber self driving cabs.
Turns out that building commercial aircraft is still hard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQK9m_OBVgY
>The US military has sunk $50 Billion dollars into this problem over the last 30 years and still aren't there.
Bell X22 ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arXpHn9DPYo ) was technically pretty successful from the start. The only disadvantage vs. V-22 is the speed - that speed though comes at the cost of lesser stability and safety and higher complexity of V-22. For commercial application the priorities would be different, and thus i think the multirotor, being more easy to develop, would come cheaper and sooner than that while any commercialization of V-22 is doomed from the start.
And that's not the whole cost and time; they've been working on tiltrotors since the 1940s.
Dassault's Falcon 6X (largely derived off the 5X that was cancelled due to design issues from the engine supplier Safran) was only just announced and isn't scheduled to go on sale until 2022, and a good portion of its design work has already been completed.
I suppose by "this problem" you referred to tilt-rotor technology. If so V-22 is combat ready, and has been deployed since 2007. Not sure what "still aren't there" means.
The next generation, Bell V-280 is in active development and already made the first flight [0]
It sounds like the typical corner-cutting Uber.
Wow, you can get a pilot's license that quick? In Germany you need 30h of driving just to get a regular car license. No large trailer or truck.
I have heard the U.S. average for number of flight hours logged prior to taking the private checkride is about 70. I know a couple of people who passed the forty hours total time (TT) mark on the flight to go meet the Designated Pilot Examiner (DPE) to take the checkride!
After that, you can only fly a very limited subset of aircraft during the day under a certain altitude (and possibly certain weather conditions?). If you want to fly at night you need to get a certification for instrument flying.
Getting to fly a huge Boeing/Airbus takes years.
The other big factor is the passengers. Even if technology for fully autonomous passenger flight is available in the next 10 years, I don't think people will trust planes flying themselves.
https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/www.zdnet.com/google-amp/art...
No idea why I have been downvotes above. Great to see intelligent conversations is rewarded with down votes here.
What's the glideslope of a multirotor vehicle?
[1] https://medium.com/war-is-boring/your-periodic-reminder-that...
[1] http://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/v-22-is-the-safest-most-su...
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/lexington-institutes-w...
"The Lexington Institute, in fact, is the one receiving money from a narrow corporate interest — Boeing."
EDIT: The only reason I looked for this connection was beacause the GP article was nicely written, long, and detailed, while the Lexington Institute seemed fluffy.
Whut the funk??!? How is this in any way similar??? Uh, correct me if I don't see something, but to me this is like saying something like: "Tesla Model 3 is similar to the Caterpillar CS-533E drum roller [1] — the difference being Tesla has 4 wheels"...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caterpillar_CS-533E
I'm in no way an aircraft person, but if I were to try to look for similarities to something, the following are more like what I'd think of:
I'm trying to resist the "Why is this on HN?" question, but can't. This is appalling dreck and doesn't belong here.
