All of those seem to have a large footprint with lots of rotors, meaning they will need dedicated landing/take off zones.
This seems to limit their usability a lot, turning them more into a short range point to point helicopter service.
Not to mention the noise pollution. Those things are all loud.
Combine that with limited speed and range, and I just don't see the concept taking off in a big way.
Some other competitors:
* Volocopter: https://www.volocopter.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OazFiIhwAEs
* Hyunday S-A1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6K7GAG1Aas
* Bell Nexus: https://www.bellflight.com/products/bell-nexus
* Ehang: https://www.ehang.com/ehang184/index https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d66MoI4GdFs
* Kitty Hawk HeavySide (Larry Page pet project): https://kittyhawk.aero https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7mc3C19kE4
* Lilium (branded as jet): https://lilium.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qotuu8JjQM
The reason this will take off (physically and economically) is cost. If you can travel 40-50m quickly for about the energy cost of a cup of coffee, it's going to be a game changer in big cities. I can take an Uber across town in Berlin but it will cost me around 20-30 euros and take 50 minutes (worse in rush hour) and is not that competitive with public transport. The same journey with a flying taxi could be done in 5-10 minutes (just like with a helicopter) the difference will be vastly lower cost. The main cost will be the pilot who can now do multiple journeys per hour and at least short term still charge a premium.
There have to be rules where those taxis can start, land, in what direction, time frames and over which places in a city. You need some kind of air control and "traffic rules". Drivers need regulated training in simulators and there need to be emergency procedures.
I believe that in the first few years such things won't be allowed near towns and cities. There will be similar rules like flying drones [1], but a lot stricter.
And the time saved by such travel will probably decrease when the sky starts looking like in the 5th Element [2].
[1] https://uavcoach.com/drone-laws-in-switzerland/ [2] https://media.giphy.com/media/Bs2pZhpxf2168/giphy.gif
By "energy cost" do you mean something like "the price of a cup of coffee spent on electricity"? That seems surprisingly efficient but maybe here (Europe) the coffee is cheaper and the electricity dearer - what's the figure in kWh?
Additionally, autonomous flight is fairly common right now. There's less going on in the air than on the ground (or rather less surprises with small response time and high consequences). Planes even land and take off by themselves. The first plane to actually be certified to autoland was in 1968[0]. The tech has been around for awhile and been making serious development this entire time.
Details: http://datagenetics.com/blog/february62019/index.html
How can organisations this large get it so wrong? When is someone going to tell them that the Emperor is not wearing any clothes?
The link you provided mentions this in an odd way:
> With a single engine helicopter you don’t have this redundancy. However, on engine failure, the single massive disk of the helicopter is an asset. ... Close to the ground, this stored kinetic energy can be traded, through pulling up the cyclic, to allow a safe landing. This is called autorotation, and is practiced by all helicopter pilots.
The air taxi that succeeds, at any sort of scale, will not be meant or designed for skilled helicopter pilots pulling levers, at the right moment, as they speed towards the ground. They will be dumb, cheap to service, unskilled to fly, and have more than one point of failure.
A) rich people have a ton of power, they will get it legalized if they really want to use them
B) There are many sparsely populated areas where rich people would still be able to make this work...think rural islands of Japan or New Zealand, very mountainous areas, the outskirts of a major metropolitan area...I think these will find use in certain markets.
Airplanes have energy from their forward motion. Helicopters have energy in their rotor blades. This energy can be used to soften a crash landing. Without this available energy, and without a parachute, then how do you soften a crash and survive?
People say that electric motors are so reliable... But batteries can spontaneously combust.
I would like to know how these aircraft are safe enough to be treated the same as a taxi ride.
They went after shiny unrealistic options like Fuel Cells/Hydrogen and wasted their lead. The world would have looked very different now if they had invested in Electric 10 years ago. Their "plug-in" electrics have 20-40 miles of all electric range. Even Ford has vehicles with 200+ miles range.
Instead, they still have only concept vehicles and their exec VP still says “We haven’t changed our policy towards battery EVs. We are not shifting our focus to prioritise battery EVs, nor are we abandoning our FCV strategy.” source: https://ww.electrek.co/2019/06/07/toyota-electric-car-images...
Toyota’s failure to convert its early lead in hybrids into a successful EV business will be quoted in business schools and boardrooms for decades as a textbook cautionary tale.
Now think how a technical solution grossly inferior to both helicopter and a prop plane will fare in the market.
Why do we need to have startup founders and car companies try their hand at building a new experimental electric helicopter to validate whether or not the market wants to use helicopters for ride hailing?
If that's accurate, isn't this a huge step forward for an electric vehicle?
I wonder what happen if there are just 100 of them on the air at the same time.
More glorified complexity. I would pay more to ride in something with highly reliable simple hardware.
This is more complex than I summarised, containing hydrogen effectively being one issue.
