NASA tests flying taxis made by biz dreaming of being the Uber of the sky NASA is testing electric flying cars for a business that wants to launch a commercial air taxi service in 2024. Joby Aviation, founded in 2009, builds all-electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft that it hopes will eventually each shuttle up to four passengers and a pilot at a time from A to B in the sky. Joby …
Yes, check the picture, why would it glide? It might be able to do some kind of autorotation, although I doubt it will usually fly high enough to get enough time for it.
(And even if it did, where in an urban environment would it be able to do an emergency landing without breaking things and maiming people?)
Until they actually put a pilot and passenger(s) in the thing.
All the videos on their channel show it flying without anyone inside. You would imagine they must have ballast - otherwise the noise generation and endurance testing would be useless to anyone other than marketing types.
"Tesla knows how to make a self driving car. Another dimension should be no trouble for their coders"
Frankly speaking, since I assume that in any real flight scenario there would be defined air corridors, the 'auto-pilot' functionality should be a piece of piss compared to a car: no roadworks, no badly-parked or semi-parked vehicles, no bicycles, no meatbags or other animals wandering about. If you have good GPS , a well-defined path in all 3 dimensions, and some sort of airtaxi-to-airtaxi transponder, going where you want to and avoiding collisions should be easier than on the ground.
Regarding concerns of what happens on failure, many of these questions are already resolved for helicopters by limiting the places and weather conditions where / when they are allowed to operate. So why not simply license these robotaxis same way as helicopters? If they want to eventually operate outside of the existing helicopter rules, they first have to have a few years in which they have proved they can successfully operate within the helicopter rules.
While there is currently a lot of VC money available for the development of airtaxi's, especially if they are 3d printed and equipped with AI, I personally struggle to see them succeed beyond a niche market already covered by helicopters. The issue is one of noise. In order to generate lift, air must be vertically accelerated. For a VTOL air vehicle, the lifting fans / propellors must perform this function. The noise generated by this process is directly related to the disk loading (force divided by proulsor disk area). Since the weight of the vehicle (force) is unikely to be negotiable, this means that the vehicle requires a substantially higher disk area than a comparable helicopter, or the noise will be the same or higher than that of said helicopter. This requirement is counter to the wish for a compact and easy to handle air vehicle, which explains why I have not seen many air-taxi projects with overly large propulsors. While some positive effects can be achieved by tweaking motor rpms and relative propellor positions, I do not expect noise levels to come much below that of a helicopter.
Now imagine a city where a significant portion of the personal transportation was taken over be vehicles operationg at low altitude while emitting helicopter-level noise.......
"some of these multi-rotor aircraft are actually MUCH quieter than a conventional helicopter"
I don't understand the downvotes. I'm in agreement with the OP who pointed out that wind noise depends on force / mass to be lifted, but that's only one part of the noise component, the other being mechanical noise:
1) The typical clattering noise of helicopters comes from the mechanism that alters rotor pitch, which is how helicopters go forward / backwards / sideways. Fixed-pitch rotors are much quieter as a mechanism.
2) Electrical motors are much quieter than internal combustion / turbine engines on helicopters
> Now imagine a city where a significant portion of the personal transportation was taken over be vehicles operationg at low altitude
In my nightmares. Along with the steady hailstorm of broken vehicles as people bump into each other and subsequently drop off the skies, taking others out on their way down. Problem is most people are barely able to cope with traffic in narrow, clearly defined 2D lanes, imagine them in a vast (yet congested) open 3D space, in the midst of Mad Max disciples, over-prudent old ladies and devil-may-care flying delivery vans.
As for the noise, frequency depending on rotor diameter, those "air taxis" will probably emit a whine somewhere between a drone and a helicopter. My money would go to a sound akin to an oversized leaf blower... (*shudder*)
Sure, but then again I can't imagine the wealthy and influential wanting to use an "Uber of the sky" over their existing, comfortable and reliable corporate helicopters. It's not like it has any advantage over the existing corporate helicopters.
Besides Uber is for younger hipsters, the chosen few use their trained chauffeurs and luxurious limousines, if only for security reasons.
Mmm, I beg to differ. For those with money to burn, especially the status/image conscious youth, there will be nothing finer than having your own personal 'droneship' to whiz you quietly above the seething masses, from one achingly cool destination to the next.
Of course, should they ever become ubiquitous, in the Uber sense, it will be a case of then having to have something that is so much more refined, or in your face, to emphasise the superiority of the occupants.
One thing is for sure, when it comes to showing off and establishing one's place in society human beings have not changed one jot in thousands of years---only what we spend our wealth on to do it. And cutting edge technology has always been a favourite, however foolish and/or generic it may turn out to be.
While I generally agree with your post, as you stated yourself, this is targeted at "those with money to burn", which means spoiled rich peoples' children, subject to specific constraints, limitations and mentalities.
They already have access to dad's chauffeur, they find using any kind of public/common transport distasteful and degrading, and there is also the security issue, rich people being potential targets for criminals and loonies, they won't trust just anybody with their children's' lives, especially a random nameless Uber-style here-today, gone-tomorrow driver.
It is true some might use it, but it definitely isn't a market solid enough to rely upon for that kind of a huge investment. Unless of course your goal is just to reach the IPO, cash in, and bye-bye.
Okay, I will be upfront about the fact that I absolutely do not believe that airtaxis are going to be a thing.
We have enough trouble with the thousands of land-based accidents we already have, we hardly need to add falling hunks of metal into the mix.
If aerial travel was so important for hopping from one place to another in a given city, helicopters would already be a roaring business. It's not because your vehicle is electric that all of a sudden it creates an entirely new market, nor will it bring the cost down to regular taxi levels. Only rich people will be able to afford it, and rich people can already charter a helicopter.
Not to mention that landing sites are at a premium in any city that could use an aerial taxi service. It's not like they'll be landing in a park.
So I fully expect this startup to fail miserably, although I will be sad to see it go.
Don't know, the electric vehicle should be a lot simpler and hence a lot cheaper to buy, run and maintain than a conventional helicopter but like Uber they hope to do away with one very expensive part, for Uber the driver, here they want to dispose of the extremely expensive helicopter pilot.
Is there's a sufficient market to support such a business? Time will tell but I as with Uber & Tesla I suspect they'll discover the hype on autonomous vehicles operating on public roads or airspace was somewhat exaggerated. As a piloted vehicle they have little to offer over an electric helicopter (if such a beast exists).
> I absolutely do not believe that airtaxis are going to be a thing.
I know of several air taxi services that are definitely a thing. Of course they use helicopters or light planes, not autonomous drones that fly by blockchain or whatever but they are air taxis.
Hope it fails. As someone that has recently started learning to fly helicopters the thought of more of those in the sky and autonomous terrifies me.
Engine failure is terrifying, falling at 1800 feet a minute at 70 miles an hour. From a height of 1500 feet means things get ugly really quickly when training over a field. Revs go to low the blades fall off, go to high they explode. Imagine that for passengers with no pilot in a city. On something that can't auto-gyrate.
Checks done before flight are visual, checking fuel is one thing but fuel purity, visual checks on cracks, clutches, props, blades and a hundred other things isn't to be ignored as anyone of them can stop the flight.
And the CAA is very strict on how flight hours, medicals, exams, written and flying (including engine failure) before I can fly just me alone. Never mind being allowed near a paying passenger.
And how would it manage through all the different air control zones. I need to know radio frequencies for loads of them when flying over little airstrips. How would that work in a busy air zone like a city airport or restricted air zones like a prison / military etc?
But people believe Hollywood in how helicopters work, a few buttons and the you are up in the air.
...thought of more of those in the sky and autonomous terrifies me.
Engine failure is terrifying, falling at 1800 feet a minute at 70 miles an hour. From a height of 1500 feet means things get ugly really quickly when training over a field. Revs go to low the blades fall off, go to high they explode. Imagine that for passengers with no pilot in a city. On something that can't auto-gyrate.
From the article:
Joby Aviation, founded in 2009, builds all-electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft that it hopes will eventually each shuttle up to four passengers and a pilot at a time from A to B in the sky.
So dunno where you got the "no pilot" from.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
