I’ve always been afraid of being killed by a drunk driver, or dying while at work. Now both of those things can happen at the same time.
We have had flying car for decades now, its called a Helicopter
People are so good at driving in two dimensions, I think we should add a third.
I still don’t understand how helicopters are not flying cars.
If you want everyone to have a flying car, we should talk about everyone having a helicopter first so we can quickly come to the conclusion of why that’s a bad idea.
You are 100% correct that helicopters and their issues are the exact reason why flying cars are a terrible idea for the general population. I even like to point them out as the same thing when people talk about flying cars. There are some technical differences between people’s image of a flying car, which is closer to a drone with the multiple lift producing drives than a singular giant spinning blade, although the little ones would be comparably dangerous in a crash.
That said, helicopters aren’t flying cars because you can’t drive them around on the ground. Which means this product is a helicopter, not a flying car.
The problem with a flying car for the general population is that people are already bad at navigating in 2D and that any technical failure in the air means a vehicle drops onto something and the average person is not going to do a proper checklist and rigid maintenance schedule on their private vehicle.
That is one of the many problems, yes.
I would hope that by the time something like this launched to the general public, it would be a service rather than an expected purchase. Like self-driving-flying taxis.
It doesn’t make sense to have everyone owning their own when they will probably be largely autonomous to avoid issues with individuals driving them (not that everyone owning a car makes sense either, but I digress), so the maintenance shouldn’t be an issue either.
It’s like hover craft, sure they work, but at what cost? Bicycles, now there’s a design one can roll with. There was an HPV, The Gossamer Alabatross, crossed the English Channel in '79. Is anybody riding them now? Do you see similar HPVs anywhere now? No!
hovercraft, too.
All I see is fully exposed propellers at groin/knee level.
Forget about a birdstrike, you hit ANYTHING and you aren’t taking off or landing.
I’ve read the same promise 5 years ago.
And 20
And 50
No, ain’t going to happen and stop trying to make it happen
Fetch…
Jesus F. Christ the BS that gets posted and upvoted in this community is getting more ridiculously Chinese propagandist by the day. Freaking air taxis? Really? Germany has like a dozen of those dumpster fire startups that chew up subsidies like it‘s no tomorrow (because for them there really isn‘t).
As a drone hobbyist, this is absolutely terrifying
25 mins of flight on a charge, and that’s not going to be at max speed , so we’ll ballpark it to 15 miles of range perhaps and that’s assuming no “traffic” or delays on landing. Not terribly practical like pretty much all of these flying car concepts.
Oh, and if anything goes wrong, you’re likely dead.
15 miles by the crow flies is a lot different than 15 miles driving on the ground.
I’m more worried about what happens when one of these contraptions wraps itself around a power line.
Why would they fly into the deep rural country side where power lines exclusively are?
You must be one of those big big city mice.
No I’ve just been to countries that aren’t stupid enough to have overhead power lines anywhere near residential or commercial properties, even in rural communities. The amount of money you save by being lazy with overhead lines is eaten up by the constant repair and maintenance, and in a competent country, health costs that they inevitably cause.
Underground lines are the only sensible solution. I mean you should be generating power that far from its primary draw anyway.
When the chances of dying in a car are just too low… Get high!
https://www.ncesc.com/geographic-faq/are-car-accidents-a-leading-cause-of-death-in-america/
I have gotten to the point that when a scifi world is made futuristic by having… traffic jams in the sky, and futuristic cities absolutely must have magic sky cars in their skyline but there is ZERO thought towards futuristic mass transit I just shut it off.
We already have flying cars that people use as their primary vehicle, it is called living in the middle nowhere Alaska and owning a bush plane. The thing is, that is actually the only kind of situation where everyone owning a flying car makes sense, extreme isolation, huge empty distances and no roads.
The whole point of a city is NOT to need something like a flying car.
It’s not that we can’t do this that has kept it from happening yet. It’s that it’s never been practical.
Yeah, this just looks like they upsized a drone without actually solving any of the practical issues with flying cars.
Maybe there’s a place for this with air ambulances or something, but in a crowded city I only see this integrating into buildings or the people below.
That’s what a helicopter is.
The problem with an air ambulance idea is you need to make it big enough to work on a patient and it needs to be big enough to hold enough battery to have enough range. You could maybe have one big enough for working on the patient, but with a shorter range, with the only advantage over a helicopter being a smaller area needed to land.
I think it will be a Segway of the air, meaning only “rich” douchbags and sightseeing companies use them in America until enough people die. Opulent presenting countries will use them for headlines like Dubai and SE Asian countries will have them for the police tactical units.
The ground level weedwhacker blades could do double-duty clearing out brush (and pesky pedestrians).
