
Larry Page’s Flying Taxis, Now Exiting Stealth Mode - fallingmeat
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/12/business/dealbook/flying-taxis-larry-page.html
======
rmason
Nice to see a local East Lansing boy (Page) behind this project;<).

I know the engineers would throw a fit but I'd find a way to add a parachute
to this craft similar to Cirrus. As of 2016 the parachute has saved 131 lives.

[https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-
news/2016/july/24/ho...](https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-
news/2016/july/24/how-cirrus-reduced-accidents)

~~~
pc86
Just wanted to point out that the parachute has mixed reviews overall (from
owners), due mainly to the costs associated with it. It requires a $15,000
repack every 10 years, which immediately adds $125/mo to the cost of
ownership. Wouldn't be that bad, except you can't just choose to fly without
it. The plane is not airworthy if the chute repack is due, and is illegal to
fly. Not to mention the fact that if you _use_ it, you're firing rockets out
of the top of the plane and essentially destroying it.

So yes the parachute is obviously a net positive but let's not just go
slapping it on every new airframe that gets developed.

~~~
nojvek
Why not? If $125/month saves your life some day, isn’t that with it?

~~~
jessriedel
The vast majority of owners never deploy it.

~~~
mvkel
The vast majority of car owners never deploy their airbags. Doesn’t mean they
aren’t worth every penny.

~~~
jessriedel
Of course. My point is that you can't just look at the number $125/mo and make
a decision. You need to also ask how often they are successfully used. Your
airbag definitely _wouldn 't_ be worth it if they were used 1/100th as often
(and probably not even if it were 1/10th).

------
Animats
The transition to winged flight is interesting. There's a large drone which
works like that. Takeoff and landing are on electrical quadrotor props, while
for forward flight, a gasoline engine provides power. This give the drone six
hour endurance.[1] So it's useful for search and patrolling. This new thing is
a scale up of that.

The successor to the Osprey will hopefully be something like this, not the
mechanical nightmare of that tilt-rotor. Each engine on the Osprey can power
the other rotor in an emergency. The mechanical linkage for that is a
nightmare.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2kcyw99V2E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2kcyw99V2E)

~~~
mpweiher
> Takeoff and landing are on electrical quadrotor props, while for forward
> flight, a gasoline engine provides power.

There's a reason for that: takeoff (and landing for VTOL) require _much_ more
power than level flight, especially with a VTOL design where all of the lift
comes from the engines, and gasoline engines get a lot heavier with power than
electric motors. On a conventional plane, you are carrying that huge/heavy
engine around for the entire flight, just for the power during takeoff.

Electric motors are a lot lighter for a given power level, but on the other
hand, the "fuel" for electric motors (i.e. batteries) is a lot heavier than
gasoline, limiting endurance.

So some sort of hybrid mechanism that blends the advantages and disadvantages
can make a lot sense, despite the extra cost/weight of a hybrid powertrain.

------
asteli
Very talented bunch. I've seen the tech and the engineering behind it, and I
have no doubt that they can build the aircraft they're claiming here.

What remains to be seen is how they interface with the existing aviation
regulatory framework. They even hint at this in the video, with the "making
this useful to society" line, and what looks to me like regulatory allowances
from NZ.

I'm fairly certain that they know powered lift isn't compatible with dense
urban environments, so don't expect a Fifth Element situation in NYC anytime
soon. :) I'm super curious to see what the use case ends up being. My money's
on super short haul, like Mountain View to Oakland sort of distances, with
numerous small, dedicated taxiports similar in scale to ferry terminals.

~~~
aetherson
I think that the interesting use for air taxis isn't in going through cities,
it's in traversing terrain that's difficult or impossible to build roads
through. So going over water or rugged terrain like steep hills or ravines.

In the SF area, there's not a ton of use for it, but perhaps a fast hop from
Treasure Island to the Embarcadero (feeding into BART) would make the proposed
redevelopment of Treasure/Yerba Buena island more attractive (as of right now,
it's hard to imagine thinking it was a great idea to live some place where you
had to take the Bay Bridge to get _literally anywhere_ ).

Going mostly over unpopulated terrain would limit (not eliminate, just limit)
both safety and noise concerns.

~~~
asteli
The use case is oddly specific- ideally you have a region that's
geographically challenging, but not sparse enough that you can just wedge an
airstrip somewhere and call it a day. It also can't be so developed that
there's existing or imminent Real Infrastructure, like a metro rail link
between Treasure Island and SF.

~~~
notahacker
I think the main tricky bit about the commercial side of the use case is that
you need your settlements to be either side of the geographically challenging
bit but also quite close together due to range limitations, and probably in
areas with usually benign weather conditions.

Small archipelagos would be an obvious use case, but I wonder how it compares
cost and convenience wise with using a boat.

~~~
soundwave106
It's probably a bit more faster and more flexible, with the downside of
holding much less cargo. I'm not sure that's enough to displace already
existing boat services to be honest.

Few areas come to mind immediately that fit that criteria. (The only one that
came to mind personally as a "maybe" was the small Pacific coastal communities
stretching up British Columbia up through Alaska, that are mostly served by
water taxi now. I don't see an advantage even there initially.)

One other possibility I see for this if there are significant advantages to
this over helicopters in certain situations, it might compete with services
currently provided that way. (EG: Could this replace a helicopter air
ambulance? Is there differences (engine volume comes to mind) that it would be
desirable to replace helicopters with this for the tourism market? Etc.)

~~~
notahacker
It's not going to compete with an air ambulance because it doesn't have the
carrying capacity. In the long term it might have favourable economics and
possibly even safety vs the Robinson R22, a helicopter which has sold a few
thousand units. But yeah, I think there are more cases for it as an
alternative low-end short range helicopter sometimes deployed as a taxi than
as an Uber alternative

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ttul
How fun would it be to have billions to sprinkle on cool projects like this.

~~~
wffurr
It would be even cooler if he would sprinkle his billions on solving real
problems instead of wasting them on toys for rich people like this.

~~~
aidaman
He is solving problems. What an inane comment. Almost every hugely innovative
technology started as a "toy for rich people."

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adventured
The Kitty Hawk Cora launch video from Monday:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeFxjRMv5U8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeFxjRMv5U8)

------
syntaxing
Can anyone chime in how this aircraft is so energy efficient? It seems like
the props on the wing will give a ridiculous amount of drag. Also, one of the
key requirements for an energy efficient rear prop plane is super laminar air
going to through the rear prop for efficient thrust. The wing design seems to
remove this advantage.

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taurath
Feels like billionaires solving billionaires problems - this doesn’t scale.

~~~
ipsum2
How can you say that when you don't even know the price of the service?

~~~
falcolas
Well, if you base the costs off of a traditional aircraft (around which this
is based), they'll be in the $100+ an hour range, minimum. The cost to buy
will be in the $2-300,000 range, minimum. They will require yearly
maintenance, not counting any maintenance required on the electric props and
batteries. This is based off a production aircraft, the Cirrus.

I'm also not immediately seeing how this would not require a pilots license -
more likely a helicopter license, though this is easily debatable.

So perhaps not billionaires, but millionaires to be sure.

~~~
maged
It already costs me 100+ an hour to transport 4 people from San Jose to San
Francisco. This would be cheaper and faster.

~~~
falcolas
Via what method? Iirc, there are many economical methods of transportation
between those two cities... Also, that $100 per hour is pure cost with no
markups to provide for revenue or growth.

I could easily be wrong, but the aircraft they were displaying looked like a 2
seater, not 4.

~~~
maged
Uber X, or 4 Caltrain tickets gets us close to 100.

~~~
falcolas
WRT Caltrain, I remember using it for commuting, and certainly don't remember
paying $50 a day to do so. But perhaps the times have changed and the prices
with them. Still, $25 per ticket one way seems ridiculously high.

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ipsum2
This is a huge step up from last year, where they showed off a drone-esque
machine with 20 minutes of battery life:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_rDkVIhQeY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_rDkVIhQeY)

Edit: they're working on both concurrently, it seems:
[https://kittyhawk.aero/](https://kittyhawk.aero/)

~~~
asteli
The drone-like vehicle hasn't been around as long as the concept from this
release. You can see earlier versions in patent drawings from 2010 [1]

[1]
[https://patents.google.com/patent/US20130214086](https://patents.google.com/patent/US20130214086)

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m12k
This seems like the kind of thing that would be useful in specific situations,
but won't be feasible for broad use until we come up with much cheaper
electrical energy production (and probably storage too) than we have today,
e.g. fusion power or much cheaper solar. At least I don't imagine it can be
very energy efficient to expend power on moving up and staying up in the air
instead of using the normal force from the ground 'for free' like a land-based
vehicle does so it only needs to expend energy to move horizontally (for an
intuition about this, think about how hard it is to jump half your body length
upward, versus walking half your body length forward). So while it's cool that
it's emissions free, it's not great if it ends up using e.g. 5-10x as much
energy to make the same trip as an electric car, and it makes it that much
more difficult to offset the environmental impact of its production and
operation.

~~~
FabHK
The Uber Elevate study from 2016 answers many of these foundational questions.

A traditional car achieves about 1 mile/kWh. An electric car achieves 3
miles/kWh, since the electric drivetrain is much more efficient. An electric
plane might achieve around 2 mile/kWh. So, worse than an electric car, but
better than a conventional car.

Some background: A car has aerodynamic and roll drag. At typical speeds (50
mph), they're of approximately the same magnitude. A plane has aerodynamic
(parasitic) drag, similar to a car, but no roll drag, but instead an
additional aerodynamic drag, the so-called induced drag, that is concomitant
with generating lift. At typical speeds (higher than a car though), they're
also approximately the same magnitude.

With lots of simplifications, one can thus say that one basically trades roll
drag for induced (=lift generating) drag.

EDIT TO ADD: Link, the economics section starts on page 81 or so:
[https://www.uber.com/elevate.pdf](https://www.uber.com/elevate.pdf)

~~~
sigi45
So whats the real power consumption? After all, getting that thing up into the
air IS the problem and not flying it.

"These examples for car and VTOL have only considered the energy required to
cruise at a specific speed, and doesn’t include the additional energy required
to get the vehicle to cruise for either the car (acceleration) or VTOL
(takeoff). "

They know exactly why this figures are missing.

~~~
FabHK
hm, I tend to disagree. You might underestimate how much energy is spent on
overcoming drag, and how strong the earth acceleration _g_ is: One always
needs to overcome it, and overcoming it just a bit more for a while is enough
for a climb, basically.

If we take the performance section for the Cessna 172 N, for example, we see
that it burns 8.4 gallons per hour at a (speedy) 75% power cruise. It takes 10
minutes to climb up to 6000 ft, and burns 1.9 gallons. In cruise, it would
burn 1.4 gallons in that time. So, the climb requires about a third more.

So, given that PEVA (personal electric VTOL aircraft) would likely cruise at
fairly low altitudes, and the climbing constitute only a small part of a
flight, say a quarter, the total extra fuel consumption would be a fairly
minor increase on top of the quoted numbers.

Note also that cars tend to accelerate and brake much more than aircraft tend
to climb and descent.

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wheresmyusern
im really excited about planes that have several smaller motors and props
instead of one or two large ones. its a design that is only now becoming
possible commercially because of EV popularity. really looking forward to
seeing where it all goes.

~~~
mirimir
Yes. It seems to have 13 rotors, 12 on the wings and a larger one in back. It
looks like each of the wing rotors can tilt on two axes. That should make the
plane very maneuverable. Better perhaps than a quadcopter. And more tolerant
of rotor failures. Also, the rotors are less likely to behead people.

~~~
jingleheimer
My guess is that the 12 wing rotors are at a fixed angles similar to a
quadcopter V-tail. Unlike a v-tail, and to hazard another guess, I figure the
inner 8 rotors point outwards to help provide stability so that a roll ends up
with the lower side pointing straight down providing more lift and the higher
side points out the side providing less lift. This pushes the craft back
upright. There are times when you actually do want to roll so the 4 outer
rotors point in. They're further out so there is more roll leverage. The
mechanisms to tilt the rotors would add extra weight to a craft that's
probably already low on margins. I'd say it's better to be a little less
efficient for a short part of a flight than carry the extra weight for the
duration.

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zitterbewegung
Smells like a publicity stunt to me. Feels like Amazon's announcement of drone
delivery where the product is vaporware.

~~~
Alex3917
Normally that would be the case for something like this, but eVTOLs have been
in the news a lot in the last 24 hours due to the helicopter crash in NYC.
There are also about fifty different companies working on the tech, so there
legitimately is a race to get it out the door.

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tommoor
Only 8 months ago they were showing just this little sit-on multi copter:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54ASH0kMSCM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54ASH0kMSCM)

I wonder how long they've been working on Cora

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yeison
That test aircraft looks very well developed. The article says it can fly 62
miles. I wonder how long it will take to recharge.

~~~
BurningFrog
Note that 62 miles is 100 km.

~~~
detritus
Ah yes, that's much longer.

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frenchman_in_ny
13 engines, electric.

And clearly they have built multiple aircraft (I haven't found N-numbers for
all of them yet).

[http://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/NNum_Results.aspx?NN...](http://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/NNum_Results.aspx?NNumbertxt=301XZ)

[http://www.aviationdb.com/Aviation/Aircraft/3/N301XZ.shtm](http://www.aviationdb.com/Aviation/Aircraft/3/N301XZ.shtm)

~~~
frenchman_in_ny
Looks like they have a number of aircraft registered, some as rotorcraft, some
as gliders.

[http://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/Name_Results.aspx?Na...](http://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/Name_Results.aspx?Nametxt=ZEE+AERO+INC&sort_option=1&PageNo=1)

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stuaxo
How is the energy use compared to ground transport ?

Are we going to dump a massive amount of heat into the environment if flying
vehicles become as popular as ordinary taxis ?

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njarboe
I think I am with Musk on this form of transportation. Much too loud for even
a small number of people to use them without high noise pollution in any urban
area. Helicopters and planes are bad enough and they are quite rare. Even
existing freeways are quite noisy. Bring on the tunnels. Unless we can get
some kind of anti-gravity or super noise cancellation, I hope these flying
cars don't become popular.

~~~
alexdong
There are many remote areas in the South Island that are hard to get to. For
example, West coast and particular the Haast area, wasn’t connected to the
rest of the country until late 1980s. That is, 130 years after Western people
started colonisation here.

Previously the only way to get to these remote areas is via light aircraft and
helicopters. “Flying doctor” and nurses weren’t uncommon. (Our midwife used to
fly in, deliver a baby and fly back home for tea.)

Public transportation, especially long distance ones, are poor. (Comparing to
Switzerland and China.) Dunedin is only 100 miles away from Queenstown but it
usually takes us 4:30 to 5:00 to get there by car.

So if you see this news from these perspectives, you’ll see why it’s so cool
and why the downsides aren’t that bad at all.

~~~
patall
So, you think those vehicles would be restricted to the country side? I find
that very hard to believe. Especially suburban areas will be doomed by broad
adaption of this kind of technology.

And while you may now see the advantage in remote areas, do not forget that
when you get faster out you get in faster and the amount of people (and hence
general noise) will increase so much. If a commute of one hour is acceptable
for most people, its just the range those people live in that increases. And
even if traffic is not that dense, some 100 dB noise every 2 minutes can be as
annoying as a busy street nearby.

I always have the feeling that people always just look what they could do if
they had this kind of technology and not what other people might do with it.

~~~
landryraccoon
I’m curious, if a local community doesn’t want to adopt a technology, don’t
you think they should regulate it locally, instead of fussing about the fact
that it may work fine for a different community? If a city doesn’t want flying
taxis I don’t see why they can’t just pass an ordinance banning them.

If flying taxis work great for New Zealand’s use cause, are you really opposed
to developing it because it won’t work in your country? What an odd way to
think about technology.

~~~
CPLX
Some things don't work as well with a federated model of rules, and one of the
things that's an especially poor match for that is comprehensive
transportation systems, sort of by definition.

~~~
kijin
These planes are designed to pilot themselves. When the passenger enters a
destination, it should query a database of areas where it is permitted to fly
and pick the most appropriate route given the constraints.

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dzhiurgis
Hijacking the thread to ask others opinions how much such aircraft could be
scaled:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nbMrxJo64M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nbMrxJo64M)

Ekranoplans where around for a while. Uses ground effect to fly quite fast and
efficiently. Imagine we made a solar wing, instead of propellers, use water
propellers to push for extra efficiency. Anyone wanna do the math?

------
CaptainJustin
Would love to see them partner with Passerine Aircraft Corp.

[https://passerineaircraft.com/](https://passerineaircraft.com/)

------
thomyorkie
Wonder how this compares in size to Dubai's flying taxis. This one seems like
it takes up more space.

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ourmandave
Article doesn't mention where they're going to build all the helipads for what
are really battery powered autonomous helicopters.

Do I have to take a normal taxi to the airport or an elevator to the top floor
of the nearest high rise to get a ride?

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sandos
Thats a very large meat grinder!

~~~
sandos
Oh, now I see thay have both high and low-wing configurations. The high-winged
one is obviously much safer from the grinding aspect.

------
maxander
If they can make a "flying taxi" airplane that isn't unsafe, isn't obnoxiously
loud, isn't energy-guzzling, doesn't require undue landing/takeoff space, and
is scalable beyond the ultra-elite, great!

But how many of those criteria do you think that even Page could get,
simultaneously? Two, maybe three? Flying cars are known for being a _somewhat
difficult_ engineering problem; that they've been hard enough to prevent
partial solutions may turn out to have been a blessing.

And it's not like there aren't _other_ solutions to transportation issues,
either.

------
Keyframe
I'm not much of an airplaneologist, but this looks like a deathtrap to me. I
appreciate all of the efforts in new transportation modes though.

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roman_savchuk
I'm not going to criticize that particular aircraft, no. I respect the effort
it took to get it up in the air. But everyone is building an electric,
pilotless vehicle for ride sharing, which also happens to be an oversized RC
multicopter. Like trying to put Tesla, Uber and DJI products and business
models into the blender and get guaranteed receipt for success. I'd love to
see more thinking outside of context here.

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grizzles
Anyone have any idea on what percentage of the energy budget is spent on
vertical takeoff? Just curious.

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mtgx
I prefer the term _air-taxi_.

I think this is an industry worth growing, but hopefully it won't become _too_
mainstream. Not sure we want thousands of these flying above our heads every
day. I like Musk's underground transit plan a bit more.

[https://youtu.be/YqoyQ0NZs9I?t=29s](https://youtu.be/YqoyQ0NZs9I?t=29s)

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make3
I wonder how expansive it would have to be to be cost effective.

Also, can it lands in the streets? is that safe ?

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jlebrech
To reduce noise you could shoot something with extremely noisy electric ducted
fans out of a big tube (tower), and get it to land into another big tube
elsewhere.

By the time the vehicle has left the tube it's high enough where noise at
ground level cannot be heard.

Something with blades could also carry less juice (or none) and glide to its
destination.

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BerislavLopac
Am I the only one that finds these unprotected rotating blades unsettlingly
dangerous?

~~~
FabHK
No. That's one reason why I much prefer the Volocopter (where the rotating
blades are high above you, like in a conventional helicopter) to the eHang
184, where they seem to be aimed at your kneecaps.

------
joncrane
Doesn't Dubai already have air taxis? Would that be a good pilot area?

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fergie
Literally the vehicles described in Brave New World. Life imitating art.

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guofangli
How much does a ride cost? I'm very price sensitive.

~~~
lnsru
Helicopter in Germany costs you 15-25€/minute. There is room for 3 passengers.
You can negotiate if booking more time. The flying taxi should be less than
that.

------
sigi45
I don't get it. Musk (boring company) and Page (air-taxi) are pumping money in
a few garbage projects.

Why don't they even try to accelerate and bring relevant technology to the
masses?

------
chillax2
When I interviewed with Uber, I met an engineer who had worked for Page @
Kitty Hawk directly before joining Otto (which as we know got acquired
immediately by Uber). I don't know that I really have a point, except I found
it interesting to hear first-hand about another "Alphabet" (technically page's
non-alphabet venture) crossover to Uber.

