
Larry Page is pouring millions into flying cars - dankohn1
http://www.vox.com/new-money/2016/12/30/14105960/flying-car-future-explained
======
danbruc
Do we actually want flying cars? They are probably less efficient because you
have to overcome gravity, they are probably going to be pretty noisy, falling
out of the sky and smashing into the ground is a new failure mode, ...

Flying cars are certainly a nice gadget, but do we really need or want them? I
can only think of two good arguments for flying cars, entering the third
dimension if we run out of space on the surface and maybe being able to get
rid of our current infrastructure, i.e. no longer having to build and maintain
roads and railroad tracks and the accompanying infrastructure.

In metropolitan areas it certainly looks a bit like we are running out of
space on the surface but I am actually not sure that we are not just pretty
bad at making use of the available space. No longer having to maintain a large
piece of infrastructure seems actually the more convincing argument to me.

~~~
nickparker
Surprisingly, they don't actually need to be all that inefficient.

The rolling resistance of a typical car is 0.01 to 0.015 [1], so the effective
lift/drag ratio of a car's suspension is about 70 to 100, for just the wheels
themselves. Missing from this number are the parasitic losses of all other
unsprung mass, aerodynamic drag, and the costs incurred by traveling along
roads which are neither level nor straight routes between your start and your
end.

Small aircraft have L/D of 10-20 [2], and electric craft will probably fare
slightly better if anything because of packaging advantages vs big ICEs.

I might do a more in depth analysis later and write up a Medium post, but my
point is: Even just looking at the rolling resistance of the car and the whole
L/D of aircraft, the difference is only an order of magnitude. Rolling
resistance is one of the smallest contributions to drag in a car, so all up
electric cars are probably only 3-6x more efficient than electric aircraft,
and combustion cars are probably have a far smaller advantage.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_resistance#Rolling_res...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_resistance#Rolling_resistance_coefficient_examples)

[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift-to-
drag_ratio#Examples](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift-to-
drag_ratio#Examples)

~~~
raquo
I don't think L/D of more than 10 is realistic for a compact VTOL aircraft
even in cruise mode, and then there's the vertical take off and landing
component that will cause further inefficiency especially on short trips. But
at the same time I don't think it matters that much.

~~~
aptwebapps
Depends on the type of VTOL. Quad copter? Not so efficient. Tilt-wing? I
imagine it's much better. (Amateur opinion disclaimer)

~~~
zevets
iirc a v-22 is below 5:1 and somewhere around 3:1

The new DEP designs will do better, but exceeding 10:1 seems unlikely

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imgabe
I hope they fly themselves as well. Humans can barely manage to safely pilot a
car in 2 dimensions. I don't want to think of the carnage that would result if
we took existing traffic and moved it 10,000 feet up in the air. Every fender
bender would become a multiple fatality.

~~~
nrjdhsbsid
Automatic flight is much easier than autonomous driving. Not much to run into
up there :).

~~~
bootload
_" Not much to run into up there :)"_

Birds, hills, turbulence.

~~~
azinman2
Ya. Having just taken a 6 personal commercial plane in stormy, windy weather
I'm glad I had two professional pilots driving. It was absolutely terrifying,
and I can't imagine your ordinary person feeling comfortable with it. I
couldn't wait to get off the plane ASAP and thought we might crash on landing.

~~~
nrjdhsbsid
Honestly the plane was likely flying itself 90+% of the time. The computers
are much better and giving a smooth ride in turbulance.

For fun take a lot at the outer trim tabs when flying in rough skies. The
computer adjusts them like 20 times a second to keep the wings stable, kinda
cool to see

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aurizon
Translation:- Larry Page is spending millions of his personal wealth - which
he is entitled to do - into a development quest to develop personal dual-use
road/aircraft. This will never become economic, although is has been shown
many times to be doable, with numerous products developed. None survived the
economic screen, let alone the FAA screen. Let us see why:- Ever see a traffic
jam? lines of 1000's of cars stopped or going slowly in a wave pattern. - Yes
- we see them all the time. Can you see, in your mind's eye an aerial traffic
jam, with 1000's of airplanes halted in mid air for a clear path? No. We have
never seen them, and we never will, until we invent sky=hooks to hang them on,
or a workable anti-gravity system(which may well be impossible).

That said, the planes will have to keep moving a little above stall speed. Can
you imagine the air traffic control nightmare of these 1000's of carplanes?

So these are enough to defeat the mass aspect. They may well be viable in
Australia, our back with large vistas of flat land and little weather on which
10,000 or more landing strips can be built. Well, we have that now in
Australia, but we use airplanes to go from place to place over longer
distances and we use cars/trucks for local use. ALl this said, Larry will make
his plane, he may sell a few to the idle rich, but they will never become
commonplace.

~~~
kefka
I get smatterings of your comments of the similar old idea of

"Can you imagine a mechanical horse carriage where all 4 hooves moved in
unison?! Balderdash, I must say. There's no way 4 legs could ever move that
fast and that synchronized! It'll never happen. Now, Jeeves, go ready my
carriage. We're going to meet a weird entrepreneur by the name of Henry Ford."

You're right. With old "state of the art", and yes I do say old, having 100+
planes in a square mile would be very trying. But we're talking of no
encryption, no authentication, no anti-jamming, no anything really. And that's
from a 2012 presentation at Defcon:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXv1j3GbgLk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXv1j3GbgLk)

~~~
aurizon
Well, cars came into being at first as steam driven, but the weight was high
and there were no hard roads, so they got along on tracks = rail road. Later
smaller gasoline driven machines came along (first Benz) and it advanced
because it freed us from costly, maintenance intensive, food intensive and
crap/pee intensive horses. Before cars many large city street were 2-3 feet
deep in horse shit. As for control, huge latency issues would hinder large
amounts of traffic.

------
Animats
How's the Ehang 184 coming along?[1] That's an electric flying car,
essentially a big 8-prop drone, announced last June. They're targeting short-
distance travel within big, crowded cities in China. China's 1% will be able
to get across Beijing in 10 minutes.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs4nDFgVx2o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs4nDFgVx2o)

~~~
JumpCrisscross
First comment makes a good observation. When a plane loses power, it glides.
When a helicopter loses power, it autorotates [1].

If a single engine on a quadcopter loses power, it crashes [2]. There is work
being done on mitigating this, but I don't see why you'd go for a quad versus
tri- or helicopter.

(Quadcopters are better than other aerial platforms at one thing:
maneuverability. To get this agility they sacrifice speed, efficiency and
payload weight.)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autorotation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autorotation)

[2] [https://www.quora.com/Can-a-quadcopter-fly-without-one-
rotor](https://www.quora.com/Can-a-quadcopter-fly-without-one-rotor)

~~~
avar
The Ehang 184 has 8 propellers, two for each of the four quad points. I'd
assume the reason is safety, that it can limp to the ground with just 7.

You're wrong about a quadcopter not being able to fly with 3 rotors, see this
video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsHryqnvyYA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsHryqnvyYA)

That looks like it would be quite a ride with a human on-board, but would
probably suck less than crashing.

~~~
woofyman
That's fine as long as all 8 have independent batteries and flight
controllers.

------
jedberg
Larry loves flying cars. I was visiting Google I want to say at least five
years ago, and on that day they happen to have a "flying car showcase". Larry
had invited companies with flying car prototypes to showcase their items, and
they were for sale (for about $300K - $500K, well within the affordability
range of the pre-IPO folks). They were basically just cars with foldable
wings, so they were more like cars that could turn into small planes.

------
overcast
I'm saying it now. Flying cars for the general population is just not going to
happen until the repulsor lift is invented, and ubiquitous with all aircraft.
Many, many years into the future. Long after those of us on HN are gone.

There is just zero need for this right now, and is just silly nonsense. Work
on making our ground systems 100% safe, efficient, and reliable first.

~~~
Spooky23
Why not?

With self driving, it makes a hell of a lot more sense than autonomous cars.
Any point in a 30 mile typical travel radius is a <15 minute flight.

~~~
overcast
Because we need to think realistically, and economically. Improving, and
incrementing familiar technology now. Not introducing another mess in the air.
We haven't even got self-driving land vehicles, and we're just going to make
the jump to aircraft that NO ONE is familiar with? We still rely on primitive
controlled explosions to get off our planet. Sure it's a neat idea, but this
isn't the Fifth Element world yet.

Update ground infrastructure, improve public transportation, make renewable
energy a priority, get our cars driving themselves.

~~~
ohyoutravel
This is probably the argument horse carriage operators made when mass produced
cars were just coming into being.

~~~
Spooky23
It's also the argument used by naysayers of corporate jet cards.

------
phkahler
Forget electric. That's just a gimmick that allows these companies to say "in
five to ten years because batteries." Prove it. Make a gas powered one to
prove your concept. The simplest flying machine is probably an autogyro.
Automate that for point to point transport, show the automation, redundancy,
and safety for urban use. Solve those real issues and then we can talk about
fancy designs.

~~~
NegativeLatency
How is an autogyro simpler than a fixed wing aircraft? The both have a motor,
and on one of them the wings have to move.

~~~
phkahler
>> How is an autogyro simpler than a fixed wing aircraft?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhZJgOA-
hyI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhZJgOA-hyI)

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

Sure looks simpler. You also get short field takeoff and vertical landing.

How about a roadable one:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CajAq6ndJYE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CajAq6ndJYE)

------
nickgrosvenor
Do they ever successfully do anything with the things they develop? Or just
buy successful companies?

They're wacky moonshot ideas sorta ring of the boy who cried wolf at this
point. they never live up to the hype.

------
zombees
So why the desire to have a VTOL car right now? The capability to do
affordable commuter air is almost in reach and we already have aircraft in the
certification pipeline that can fly 2 people on electricity alone for about an
hour (see Pipistrel Alpha Electro and Airbus E-Fan). VTOL is something we've
been working on for decades and still have issues with reliability (MV-22/F-35
anyone?) but airplanes are inherently stable and incredibly simple once you
have a power plant that doesn't suck. If you want to know why GA has been
lagging so hard, just about every plane you see has a $30k, 10gph, 258lb, lead
guzzling O-360 in it that dates back from the 1930s. And yes, we still use
leaded gas (100LL).

------
drum
Interesting title considering the article's as much about Uber and battery
efficiency a la Tesla as it is Larry Page.

I'm still curious about how highways for these types of aircraft will be
implemented. I imagine the goal is ubiquity and at some point, with thousands
of these things flying around, flight paths will be the bottleneck.

~~~
chaostheory
could be VTOL

[http://moller.com/](http://moller.com/) \- this project seems dead =(
hopefully either I'm wrong or something more interesting takes its place

~~~
BoringCode
It's not just dead, they've yet to perform untethered flight on any of their
prototypes. The Terrafugia Transition is an example of a far more practical
form of "flying car"

------
nojvek
Why does it need to be an entire car. I just want a drone I can hook a seat
into with a range of 10-20 miles. Is that impossible? Lifting 200 pounds for
20 miles is probably doable with current technology right?

------
nrjdhsbsid
I did a bit of sleuthing on this project a while ago. Based on what I could
find, here's what they're working at:

VTOL plane with 8ish electric fans

Hybrid gas/electric

Rotary engine in back for charging batteries and longer flights.

------
jmcgough
A lot of the critical comments I see here are addressed the Uber paper
([https://www.uber.com/elevate.pdf](https://www.uber.com/elevate.pdf)) which
is a really interesting read.

The cusp of their argument is that several technologies are coming together to
make VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) feasible within the next decade.
VTOL aircrafts are theoretically much more energy efficient than helicopters,
and a lot of the cost associated with planes is due to their low production
volume. If a company like Uber started to use VTOL aircrafts, the price would
rapidly decline to closer to what cars cost now, and the cost of a flight
would be low enough that more than just the wealthy could use them.

~~~
justicezyx
I hope it's not Uber pioneer this movement.

Uber showed that they are not willing to comply public agency on regulation-
related restrictions. VTOL vehicles, they are more dangerous than cars. Uber's
attitude, when handling such technologies, make me scared.

~~~
johngalt
The FAA is an entirely different animal than municipal codes backing taxis.
Uber's 'easier to get forgiveness than permission' model will _not_ fly with
the FAA.

------
bryanrasmussen
huh, it looks like he might be under the mistaken impression that he's
actually pouring it into small airplanes, as was I after reading the article.

~~~
marcosdumay
A self-piloting VTOL small airplane is about the nearest thing we will get
from a flying car in a long while.

~~~
bryanrasmussen
sure, in the same way the pancakes I am going to make for breakfast is the
closest thing I am going to have to waffles today but if someone is going to
ask me what I had for breakfast I won't tell them 'waffles'.

------
disposablezero
These will only be toys, and here's why: fuel efficiency (or lack thereof) per
passenger. Good luck getting over 2 MPG considering having to haul around bits
to meet both road and aircraft regs, fuel and passenger. Plus, do we really
want to rehash the already decidedly terrible prospects of making average
distracted/intoxicated/uncoordinated people into pilots? Give up lusting over
Peter Thiel's science fiction pipedreams and move onto solving real problems
like breaking dependence on fossil fuels or sequestering greenhouse gases.

------
kafkaesq
So he can fly over, and get a closer look at, people living in RVs on the
street just a few miles from where his employees eat free steak and sushi
every day.

Like the Chavez family, for example:

[https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/dec/28/silicon-
vall...](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/dec/28/silicon-valley-
homeless-east-palo-alto-california-schools)

------
seunosewa
Why would the VTOL miniplanes described in the article be better than small
helicopters, which take off the same way?

~~~
ChuckMcM
Pilot training time.

At the Hiller Museum in San Mateo one of the docents was talking about how
helicopters seem so great but they are so hard to fly with the pilot managing
rotor pitch, rotor speed, and countering torque with the tail rotor. A typical
quad/hexa/octo copter type vehicle is much easier to fly. (as is a gyrocopter
but it cannot really take off vertically)

~~~
foldr
>A typical quad/hexa/octo copter type vehicle is much easier to fly

They're easier to fly because they have software providing artificial
stability. If you had to control each rotor individually it would be virtually
impossible. There's no reason in principle why a helicopter couldn't have
similarly straightforward controls.

~~~
Pyxl101
Yes, I've wondered that.

Why not provide a joystick for translation motion, rudder pedals for rotation,
and a lever for ascending and descending? Allow the human to provide simple
inputs, like: tilt the stick forward to go forward. No other inputs required.
Aircraft will remain at the same altitude while it tilts forward and gains
airspeed.

The computer consumes all of these controls, understands what the human wants
to do, and then makes the necessary low-level adjustments. I suppose one
obstacle to this plan is that the helicopter would need to be entirely fly-by-
wire, and there would be no fallback to manual control. This would likely make
the helicopter more complex and expensive.

------
crispytx
These companies are trying to produce something that already exists: The
Ultralight Aircraft. Ultralights are cheap, require little training, and no
licensing to operate. HOWEVER, they're @#$%ing slow, and aren't practical as a
means of transportation because you can get places faster in car.

------
ilaksh
I believe that something like a self-guided human-size quadcopter is safer
than a helicopter and that will start to take up some of the luxury helicopter
transport market.

People seem to be arguing that helicopters are safer. I'm not an aerodynamics
expert, but my intuition tells me that will be proven wrong eventually. They
just are misjudging a newish way of doing things. Anyway, I don't see any
point in arguing about it. Eventually the drones will get bigger and bigger
and someone will have the balls to allow it to be tested properly. And
eventually people will catch on.

------
codecamper
Larry Page receives millions every week through automatic sales of his Google
stock. I'd guess this project is for impressing his buddy Richard Branson and
any other star he'd like to hang out with.

------
evolve2k
"German says battery technology isn’t quite there yet. He predicts the energy
density of batteries will need to approximately double for small electric
airplanes to really take off."

------
MrJagil
I'm curious if more propellers add redundancy in emergencies or if the added
number of failure points will show not to be worth it.

------
sargun
I'm curious, why hasn't anyone worked with ground effect vehicles (things like
wing-in-plane) in an urban setting. It seems like commuting from South SF <->
Mountain View would be greatly smoothed by introducing GEVs without a
ridiculous cost.

------
mannykannot
The hardest problem is going to be noise, and electric propulsion is not the
solution. Rotating blades are very effective noise generators, and the only
alternative we have to rotating blades in some form or other are rockets.

------
upofadown
The "lots of small propellers" VTOL approach for all practical purposes needs
an large area of land anyway. There is no way any neighbours would tolerate
the epic levels of noise such a scheme produces.

------
dboreham
On the plus side: flying cars actually exist while self-driving ones do not.

------
maverick_iceman
Why can't we use small helicopters as flying cars? Is it because economics
make the idea infeasible? If that's so then why the current ideas will be
better?

~~~
kalleboo
I've been wondering something similar - why is it that we have all these GPS-
controlled self-flying stabilized quadcopters using cheap chinese
microcontrollers, but a lack of mini-helicopters using the same technology. Is
it that much more difficult to computer-control? Or are the more complicated
mechanics just "not worth it" when you can just build a quadcopter instead?

------
xbmcuser
The next step from automated selfdriving cars could be flying cars. I wouldn't
trust a million idiots flying but if it's AI it would probably be safer.1

------
frevd
Why only 4, 8 or 12 rotors? Can a group of much smaller rotors replace the
thrust a single bigger one produces? Would add a lot more redundancy and limit
the costs.

~~~
bobsil1
Yes. You can sum rotor areas to add up to same as one big rotor.

------
shmerl
Well, let him not stop pouring millions into Google Fiber.

------
mentos
I was thinking of a quadcopter taxi design that could be designed to protect
the passenger in the event they fell from many stories. Something that would
suspend the single rider's seat in the center of the cockpit from cables
attached to the shell. Whatever the best design for the classic 'egg drop'
test would probably be a good start.

If you could guarantee survival from terminal velocity I think a drone taxi
could become a viable mode of transport.

------
pmarreck
Anyone else remember the Moller 400? And the issue of Popular Mechanics that
was devoted to it?

------
dsr_
Ingredients:

One flying car, capable of moving 4 x 100 kg (passengers and baggage).

One self-piloting feature, allowing (or mandating) autonomous movement to the
destination.

One timing device and detonator.

400Kg of whatever kind of explosives you can get.

Behold: Uber's cruise missile.

Come to think of it, you can probably load up a lot more payload for less
money in a ground vehicle.

------
sidcool
We drive in two dimensions, it's about time we explored the third one.

------
eip
The success of SillyCon Valley has mostly been from companies with close ties
to the government that commercialize black and gray ops technology.

We can only hope that the next two technologies scheduled for public
availability are permanent batteries and antigravity.

------
baybal2
>flying cars

Is Larry going to be the first billionaire mental asylim patient?

------
techrich
This could turn into a Clive Sinclair obsession with his car!

------
vit05
Autonomous air is way easier than autonomous ground.

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wernercd
For the love of God, make something affordable (50's? 60's?) and I'd buy one
in a snap... my daily commute is PITA and sore nead of drone'ification.

~~~
pmcollins
I think you mean soar need. :-)

------
gondo
AeroMobil already has working prototype

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kken
Because he can.

That's the only answer.

