
NEC shows ‘flying car’ hovering steadily for minute - prostoalex
https://www.apnews.com/2d4ce8955bc04032928afdf97ed42818
======
Animats
The EHang 184 looks more promising.[1] That has four sets of contra-rotating
props, so there's some redundancy. Flight time 23 minutes, so it's a
demonstrator, not something useful. Like the others, it's a scaled up
quadrotor drone. This concept needs a higher battery energy density to work.

Someone recently flew a jet-powered "hoverboard" across the English
channel.[2] That thing is powered by several large model aircraft jet engines.
It's much like the Hiller Flying Platform of 1954.[3]

If you like strange VTOL craft, many of them are in the Hiller Aviation Museum
in San Carlos, CA.

Also check out the famous AvroCar flying saucer.[4] The US National Archives
has uploaded the declassified videos to YouTube. The first video, before the
first flight, was classified SECRET. The second video, after the first flight,
was only CONFIDENTIAL. The third and final video was UNCLASSIFIED, because it
didn't work. The thing was sent to what is now NASA Ames to see if it was good
for anything. The video shows it bumping around a meter or two off the ground,
pretending to be a hovercraft. The original goal was a supersonic VTOL
aircraft. Not even close. The U.S. Army canned the project in favor of the
Huey helicopter, which actually worked.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7Hm-
rmLQcU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7Hm-rmLQcU) [2]
[https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2019/08/04/french-
inventor-...](https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2019/08/04/french-inventor-
hoverboard-english-channel-intl-vpx.bfm) [3]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANBeuGcZHBA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANBeuGcZHBA)
[4]
[https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/army_saucer/](https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/army_saucer/)

~~~
dTal
>That has four sets of contra-rotating props, so there's some redundancy

That is _no_ redundancy. With only four booms, it only takes a single boom
failure (electrical or mechanical) to crash. And with co-axial counter-
rotating props, a prop failure will almost certainly cascade to its partner -
so again, you really only have four props.

There is almost no survivable failure mode with that design.

~~~
de_Selby
If just one wheel fails on a car travelling at 100km/h on a road with oncoming
traffic you're very unlikely to survive either.

~~~
Ntrails
A 200km/h head on collision with equivalent modern cars is absolutely
survivable. Gravity is pretty potent at getting you moving faster than that,
and with extremely uncertain impact point

~~~
marcinzm
It's actually a 100km/h collision done twice. Each car goes from 100 to 0, not
from 200 to 0. There's twice the energy but it's distributed across the two
cars so for each one it's equivalent to hitting a stationary wall.

That said, based on this video I don't think an actual 200km/h is anywhere
near survivable for the average modern car:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmRkPyuet_o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmRkPyuet_o)

Possibly higher end sports cars with cages and five point harnesses may fare
better.

~~~
todd8
A 100km/h head-on with a similar car going 100km/h should be similar to a
100km/h head-on collision with a solid concrete wall. However a car traveling
at 200km/h has _four_ times the kinetic energy as a car traveling at 100km/h
so a collision at that speed is much less likely to be survived than a
collision at 100km/h.

~~~
matt-attack
Wow you are the first person to point out what I’ve been saying for decades. A
car hitting another car at the same speed is _indistinguishable_ from a car
hitting an immovable wall.

Intuition wants to think it’s twice as bad.

As an aside can I pose another physics car challenge to you that 100% of
people I’ve asked get wrong?

You’re the only car at stop light waiting for the light to turn green. You
look up in your rear view mirror and see a car bearing down on you presumably
with a distracted driver. You know you’re about to get rear-ended. In that
split second do you: A) Let up on the brakes and put the car in Neutral or B)
slam in the brake as hard as you can.

~~~
dzdt
The brake will increase survivability for you; neutral will increase
survivability for the other driver. What hurts you is the sudden acceleration
from the impact, and the brake will decrease that. What hurts the other driver
is the sudden deceleration of impact; your brake will make that a harder stop
for him while being in neutral would make it a bit less of a hard stop.

~~~
gamblor956
This is backwards.

Your car will accelerate suddenly from the impact either way, so you want to
increase the time-frame over which the impact forces of the crash are
dissipated. If your car is in neutral, then the crash is less severe because
only part of the other car hits you before your car starts gets pushed
forward, so more of the energy of the impact gets transmuted to accelerating
your car and less energy needs to be absorbed by your car's crumple zones.

If you slam on the brakes, you effectively turn your car into a stationary
object, and that means you and the other car must absorb the full energy of
the collision. At collision speeds where survivability is a concern, this
usually means the crumple zones are inadequate to absorb the energy of the
collision and so more of it gets passed on to your body.

Ideally, you would want to accelerate your car as much as possible before the
impact to minimize the speed differential. Even a 10mph decrease in the
differential has a huge impact on survivability.

[Note: bigger cars can survive crashes better because they have more _mass_
they can act as crumple zones to absorb the force of the crash. Older, more
rigid cars would frequently survive with limited damage crashes that killed
their occupants, at lower average speeds than today, because the cars
transmitted more of the impact forces to the occupants. Modern cars are
designed to crumple to dissipate impact forces.]

------
satori99
> All of the flying car concepts, which are like drones big enough to hold
> humans, promise to be better than helicopters. Helicopters are expensive to
> maintain, noisy to fly and require trained pilots.

They forgot to add helicopters can also auto-gyrate in the event of engine
failure.

Quad-copter drones probably just crash.

~~~
Aozi
>Helicopters are expensive to maintain, noisy to fly and require trained
pilots.

This part really puzzles me, I mean I guess they're better than helicopters
but all those thing apply to flying cars as well, just to a lesser degree.

Getting some flying cars won't be cheap, maintaining them might be cheaper
than a chopper but still not very cheap.

And if you're going to pilot one of these, and carry people around I guarantee
you will have to be licensed and trained in piloting one. The regulations
won't be as loose as with drones.

As for the noise, well this isn't exactly quiet....
[https://youtu.be/cmdilp9LM0E?t=67](https://youtu.be/cmdilp9LM0E?t=67)

Sure it might not be as bad as a helicopter but you also rarely have two dozen
helicopters zipping around near ground level. While the whole plan is to have
these zipping around everywhere.

~~~
dgzl
>As for the noise, well this isn't exactly quiet....

I remember listening to Elon Musk dismissing flying cars for this reason.

~~~
yoz-y
I wonder if asymmetric blades like in fans could work and if they would be any
good for reducing the noise.

~~~
mannykannot
There has been a good deal of economic incentive for finding ways to reduce
the noise of the fans in turbofans for a long time. the relatively recent
introduction of chevrons on the exit end of fan nacelles shows how even minor
improvements are pursued. It is unlikely that an opportunity for significant
improvement has been overlooked.

------
corodra
Flying cars have been functional since the 90s. There are more problems to
this concept.

A. Imagine DUIs in widely available flying vehicles.

B. Autopilot is still dogshit. That's the truth.

C. If you're old enough, you'll remember when a commercial airline would be
high in the sky and you'd still have to pause talking to someone on the
ground. Now, even though they will be quieter, electric and all, but high
speed rotors still make noise. Lots of it. Add lots of these in lower
altitude. Good bye quiet spaces.

D. Maintaince. Oh my shit, few people properly maintain their ground cars. Wtf
do you think is going to happen to a flying car? Difference is, you don't roll
to a stop on engine failure. You crash into a home with someone's family in
their teaching their toddler to walk.

E. You think those trucks through crowds were bad a while ago? This is
borderline democratizing terrorism.

F. Mile per watt is going to be way worse than a car. Itll take way too much
energy in comparison. Those power conglomerates are going to want their pound
of flesh.

~~~
duderific
As far as E, not sure you could do more damage than a box truck would do. If
you tried to fly into a crowd somehow you would crash and probably only hurt
people within a relatively small radius.

~~~
corodra
Um... should I tell you about a little known event called 9/11?

Let's just add, oh, I don't know, 100 pounds of a fertilizer bomb like the
Oklahoma city bomber. He used a lot more, but 100 is still crazy dangerous.
Add you have a vehicle that laughes at bollards, gates and fences.

You do know, bad people actually do exist. Trusting tech companies and scifi
hopes and dreams really isn't an effective strategy.

~~~
starpilot
Which you can already do with existing small helicopters for rent, general
aviation airplanes etc. Flying cars aren't a new threat in this respect.

~~~
corodra
Current pricing and registration are the current barriers to entry, especially
training. It's not straightforward easy to fly a helicopter or small airplane.
Not crazy difficult. But harder than a ground vehicle. Making it too easy and
affordable and making them crazy plentiful in the air so they can't be tracked
easily, that's the danger.

------
olivermarks
[https://youtu.be/vzm6pvHPSGo](https://youtu.be/vzm6pvHPSGo) IBM decided lotus
software was more important than flying cars

~~~
sircastor
This commercial has stood out on my mind for nearly 2 decades. Probably a
combination of Avery Brooks and flying cars, bit it had a lot of memorability
to me for someone who used Lotus for 4 months at a job.

~~~
cheez
Where did Avery Brooks develop his speech technique...

~~~
bitwize
(in Jon Lovitz Master Thespian voice) ACTING!

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swatkat
Reminds me of vaporware Moller Skycar[0] and Gyrocopters[1] from yesteryear.

[0] [https://moller.com/](https://moller.com/) [1]
[https://i.imgur.com/JisWKOR.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/JisWKOR.jpg)

~~~
ansible
Gyrocoptors have been, and still continue to be a thing, for like... 85 years.
The design has not been ever marketed as a "flying car" (to my knowledge),
though it does have a relatively short takeoff roll compared to conventional
aircraft. Search for "autogyro".

------
Mathnerd314
Video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmdilp9LM0E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmdilp9LM0E)

It rocked back and forth and bounced when it landed, clearly a lot of tuning
left.

~~~
tqkxzugoaupvwqr
The wheels are too narrow. When it landed, it almost tipped over to the side.
A little bit of cross-wind and it’s lying on its side.

------
belgianguy
I wouldn't call this a flying car, I would call this a quadcopter with wheels.

While the prospect of having less traffic jams is desirable, the odds of being
T-boned from above or below by a distracted pilot become greater than zero.

I think we'll need Type 5-and-then-some AI pilots before any of this becomes a
reality in day to day commutes.

~~~
erklik
> I think we'll need Type 5-and-then-some AI pilots before any of this becomes
> a reality in day to day commutes.

Wouldn't AI in flight become much easier to create compared to driving AI on
the ground? I mean don't planes already have somewhat of an autopilot.

I have no experience or knowledge on the matter, but common sense seems to
indicate that air-flight has considerably less environmental variables and
could be significantly easier in most cases.

~~~
bobthepanda
> air-flight has considerably less environmental variables

Does it? Instead of routing in two dimensions you now need to do it in three.
You then also need to take into account other actors who are also routing in
three dimensions. There are no road delineators in the sky.

There's also the rather obvious safety concern that in the event of a
malfunction, an accelerating, out of control thousands-of-pounds mass
accelerating forwards becomes an accelerating, out of control thousands-of-
pounds mass accelerating forwards _and coming down due to gravity_.

~~~
enneff
Routing is much easier when you can basically go from point A to B directly.
Coordination would be required to prevent collisions with other vehicles, but
evasion in 3D just means changing to an uncontended altitude. I think the
extra dimension actually makes it easier.

~~~
benbristow
I think you're right.

Planes have had autopilot systems for a while now where they basically fly
themselves.

The big tech firms have been struggling to make a fully autonomous no-human-
needed driving car for a while now. So many variables to deal with. Watch
Tesla videos on YouTube and you'll see them still struggling on certain
types/conditions of roads etc.

~~~
thombat
Large planes fly themselves on planned routes which avoid incursions by other
planes by design: the function of air traffic control is to assign the routes
such that incursions don't occur. In the event that the onboard collision
avoidance system projects that another aircraft will come too close the warns
the pilot with a recommended action. There is also a ground proximity warning
system which issues warnings about collision with ground/mapped obstacles but
again leaves it to the pilot to take the necessary action.

ATC relies upon surveillance radar that won't provide adequate coverage at low
elevations (too many obstructions). ATC is also badly overstretched in busy
airspaces coping with existing traffic. Adding a large number of new low-
altitude aircraft will require new navigation technology (e.g. coordinating a
swarm of vehicles in close proximity, relaying warnings about dangerous wind
conditions or uncontrolled vehicles, etc)

Conditions in the air can be more treacherous than on a road: although there
are more degrees of freedom the supporting air is also more variable than a
road: wind shear and clear air turbulence can be perilous even for large
aircraft, icing can quickly cripple aerodynamics, and in the event of failure
safely halting can be problematic.

------
tomcam
Has anyone effectively dealt with the noise problem? Vehicles this size would
be unacceptable almost anywhere people are present for the noise alone.

~~~
sambroner
Would this be a problem if these cars exclusively took off from the top of sky
scrapers? If I remember from my time in Nyc, above the 20th floor it’s quite
hard to hear even the loudest noises from the street.

Presumably from the ground, it’d be hard to hear one of these taking off on
the 30th floor.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
It severely restricts the potential market if you do this (only travels from
one skyscraper to another are supported). For instance you can just completely
forget about Washington DC, London and Paris, and many more cities.

And even in cities with skyscrapers, they tend to be clustered in one or two
districts, so you can only travel within a very small part of the city.

My feeling about the current push for flying cars and autonomous transport, is
that when our grandchildren ask us about it, it will be in the same way as
children today ask why they were still playing violins when the Titanic went
down.

~~~
pilsetnieks
Well, skyscraper to skyscraper (or helipad, or other permitted areas) would be
a start. Eventually the tech could catch up - for example, with materials like
these - [https://phys.org/news/2019-03-acoustic-metamaterial-
cancels....](https://phys.org/news/2019-03-acoustic-metamaterial-cancels.html)
\- being developed.

~~~
imhoguy
Skyscraper cable cars would be less expensive/noisy/power hungry and with more
capacity. [https://arstechnica.com/science/2013/02/envisioning-the-
urba...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2013/02/envisioning-the-urban-
skyscraper-of-2050/)

~~~
vidarh
Skyscraper cable cars require them to be near enough to each other, which
would limit them to far fewer city centres. London for example has very few
skyscrapers, but several parts of town have some and quite a few more have a
bunch of 20+ story buildings, but only two areas (City and Docklands) have
many buildings like that clustered close enough for cable cars to seem
potentially viable by far enough for it to possibly be interesting.

------
ma2rten
I don't understand why this is called a flying car and not a quadcopter. Cars
by definition have 4 wheels and drive around.

~~~
adrianmonk
It is supposed to cover many of the same use cases as a car.

Also, "car" has many meanings already: passenger car, train (or subway or
roller coaster) car, and elevator car. It doesn't seem unreasonable to add
another.

------
EL_Loco
I haven't read much into this, but the Blackfly looks at least as promisin as
the competition: [https://www.opener.aero/](https://www.opener.aero/)

edit: Forgot to add that it has already flown over 20,000 miles with payload
(in about 2k flights)

------
adrianmonk
Same question as always applies: how much energy does it use compared to a car
that drives on a road?

The article does mention electric (or hybrid) power, but since electric cars
are a thing now, when comparing alternatives it seems like this would not have
the lowest energy usage.

~~~
FabHK
The Uber Elevate white paper answers many of these basic questions [1].

Bottom line:

    
    
      Conventional car about  1 mile / kWh
      Electric car about      3 miles / kWh
      Electric VTOL about     2 miles / kWh
    

[1] [https://www.uber.com/elevate.pdf](https://www.uber.com/elevate.pdf) page
81ff

------
xgulfie
A flying car, aka "helicopter"

------
fnord77
Moller's sham skycar managed this feat 15 or 20 years ago.

------
JustSomeNobody
Tethered. Just like the Moller car forever ago.

And you now someone will stand underneath this thing as it's landing and get
beheaded. Just saying. If it can happen, it will.

------
trollied
Has anyone thought about downdraught from these if they're ever sold en-masse?

It'll be a complete nightmare for pedestrians.

~~~
adrianN
And the noise, and the things falling from the sky when they crash.

------
holoduke
In my vision the only challenge we need to overcome is to increase energy
density/weight ratio by a factor of 100. Rest of the tech is already there.
Letting a car hover for a minute isn't that special. Letting one hover for 3
hours is.

------
SubiculumCode
The only way there will be mass adoption/acceptance of flying cars will be if
flight is completely automated. The thought of my neighbor landing on my house
is all too vivid.

~~~
ht_th
Yes, crash landing into people, building, trees, and other traffic is a
concern. But automation is not enough, we also need standardization and
synchronization, because I am not looking forward to a future where the whole
sky above a city is filled with random flying objects everywhere. That would
be a mess, particularly around/over low-rise buildings, such as in villages,
suburbs, and similar neighborhoods. Flying everywhere you want to go might
make sense in either densely populated high-rise cities where you could fly
and park your car at height, freeing the ground floors for pedestrians,
cyclists, nature, recreation, and so on, or for sparse populated areas where
there is no-one to be bothered anyway.

------
RickJWagner
Hovering steadily..... they've got rush-hour scenarios covered!

------
popeye77
Looks like a cross between drone and rickshaw. I want!

------
varjag
looks like a death wish

------
693471
Not interested unless they've defied physics and made it silent.

------
matthewfelgate
Stop trying to make flying 'cars' happen.

~~~
Erlich_Bachman
Why exactly?

Everyone knows they will have noise issues and thus cannot be used in tightly
populated areas, but there are miriads of other places and usage cases for
them.

