So, I don't mean to be a hater, and it looks like they've put a lot of effort into this from a technical standpoint, but this does not actually solve actual practical problems for actual urban mobility for any reasonable fraction of the population.
The aircraft need to take off and land from somewhere, and given that they're multi-ton objects with rapidly-spinning metal protrusions, that'll need to be designated spaces. Designated spaces mean rate limiting - think of a taxi queue outside an airport. These will not just be allowed to fly _anywhere_ - they will have approved flight paths, because there's no way we'll allow a substantial number of flying vehicles to just fly wherever without some kind of controls, and they'll absolutely require more space between them than cars on a highway get. They've got a range of 90 miles, which is nice, but what's the turnaround time look like? How long between flights does it take to get the air taxi back in the air?
This may be a fine way for the wealthy to avoid traffic between their tower and the airport, but there's absolutely no world where this makes any kind of genuine impact on traffic or urban transit broadly.
I’d say eliminating the AvGas is more important. Plus, a big efficiency jump in absolute terms vs. rotorcraft. There are certainly advantages to the eVTOL but I agree that it’s a pretty limited market.
Although, there are inexpensive helicopter rides in NYC. $200 for a seat in a 5 minute flight from Manhattan to JFK.
Eliminating the pilot lets it carry another passenger instead of the pilot. They still have to pay the people at the base station to monitor and potentially take over the flight, which means they probably have to be pilots, unless they've really automated the whole thing to the point where there is no manual control, just up/down, start/stop, follow route buttons. That may be the case since I can't see a pilot manually controlling 13 motors to maintain balance and guide the aircraft. Not sure you need a pilot if there is a "land in any open space" button/remote control.
On May 16, 1977, the landing gear failed on a Sikorsky S-61L (N619PA) while it was taking on passengers on the roof of the Pan Am Building. The aircraft fell onto its side. Its spinning principal rotor blades killed four passengers waiting to board (including movie director Michael Findlay) and injured a fifth. Parts of a broken blade fell into the streets below, killing one pedestrian and injuring another. The accident precipitated the permanent closure of the heliport.[11]
Computation, sure. Aviation? Not really: helicopters today are not much different from those in 1977, and not much safer either. When they crash (and they do), it's just as bad as this 1977 crash.
what’s the incident rate per trip though? 3 accidents over the course of a couple decades might or might not be substantially different than other forms of transport, especially after considering the improvements mentioned by sibling.
I cant imagine this would be able to raise enough money but feel like if this tech was working they should just start in tourist locations. Perhaps drop you off with skis somewhere remote or island hop.
It can have an impact on the margin for special purposes initially (ambulance, airport transfers), but then could trickle down. Imagine they’re as prevalent as taxis.
You say that in jest any yet it's so accurate that I can name at least one pharmaceutical company that went in on the flying taxi grift to score several rounds of funding.
What a fantastically BS header video -- everyday people getting into what appears to be a real vehicle, using a customer tablet interface, seatbelts... and then no shots of it taking off or even spinning up. Might as well be a fiberglass mockup; maybe it is. Don't pretend that you have a commercial vehicle if you don't actually have one.
It is a really awful video. The same clips are repeated two and three times. And no takeoff and landing video.
There's older video of a previous prototype taking off, landing, and flying around.[1] That gives a sense of how it handles.
It's a reasonable design. More practical than the eHang.[2] The eHang has been around for years; it's a quadrotor drone scaled up to carry people. It has the big problem of all pure-thrust craft - no glide capability. Flies OK, but not much range.
There have been a few other drone-like vehicles built like that. None seem to be deployed.
Range and battery life are a huge problem.
Having a wing helps. Once transition to forward flight has been made, power requirements are much lower. So the range becomes useful. And there's at least the potential to glide to a controlled crash on power failure.
There's been a lot of interest lately in VTOLs that take off on electric power and then use a wing and pusher prop for cruise. There are even drones like that, with ranges of hundreds of miles. This is much simpler mechanically than tilting wing concepts, which are mechanical nightmares. Look up how the Osprey's power train works.
It's also nice seeing those props above head height, rather than down at ankle and head level like the eHang.
My grandfather told me shortly after Kitty Hawk, posters appeared in Manhattan claiming "Soon! New York to Paris in 15 hours by air!" with glamorous people walking toward a Concorde-like airplane.
If you are going to believe the BS header video, you might as well believe this BS story.
>My grandfather told me shortly after Kitty Hawk, posters appeared in Manhattan claiming "Soon! New York to Paris in 15 hours by air!" with glamorous people walking toward a Concorde-like airplane.
To be fair, the posters were absolutely correct. It was soon after Kitty Hawk that it became possible and even commonplace to fly on commercial passenger aircraft from NY to Paris in 15 hours or less. Of course, this depends on exactly how you define "soon"...
Several comments are worried about gliding on power failure on these craft.
A couple observations. Commercial airliners like Airbus with electrically actuated control surfaces have redundant power buses, crossbars, actuators etc.
A multirotor doesn't actually need full power to emergency land, just enough o hold a descent rate of 10-20 kts like a parachute. If run all your motors at less than full power normally, then if you lose a few, you have some capacity to throttle up the remainder in concert to emergency land.
I'd be more concerned about how it selects an emergency landing spot over a city.
"Watch This Chinese Flying Taxi Take Flight Above Dubai"
> The XPeng X2, an electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicle from EV firm XPeng Inc, soared in the skies of the United Arab Emirates city during a test flight on Monday. While the flight was uncrewed, the company said that they conducted a manned flight in July 2021.
“Autonomy” but thankfully it acts like a drone for the tricky parts.
I’m not sure that this solves our traffic problem. A four passenger plane might end up just like a 4 passenger car - mostly empty, but because it’s flying using more energy, taking up more space, and creating a lot more noise. It opens up more capacity than using a road alone, but when everyone wants to go to the same football match by air-taxi, you’re going to end up with these things circling for miles.
"..we’ve designed-in multiple redundant systems and engineered out all single points of failure." Can this aircraft glide or auto-rotate to the earth if it has a catastrophic power malfunction?
I would hope these would be standard on vehicles that cannot "dead-stick" (glide) to landing like a fixed wing, or auto-rotate to the ground like a helicopter.
In forward flight, I wonder what its glide ratio is?
In VTOL, safety is a much greater concern. Six props with what appear to be independent motors makes me feel a lot better about it from the start, though. What’s its TWR?
Not going to answer anything not obvious from the video (sorry), but it's actually twelve independent motors -- the six that catch your eye in that opening shot are the front six, you can just see another six behind them.
I wouldn’t expect you to go into extreme detail based on a random, pseudo-anonymous poster on a forum! :)
My point being that if the TWR is > ~1.5 - and I’m quite sure it is, or VTOL would be very difficult - then you can “safely” lose a prop and still be able to get back to the ground.
Yep. And the more independent rotors you have, the less excess thrust you need to have good performance in a single failure; but the more you have to consider multiple failures.
The aircraft need to take off and land from somewhere, and given that they're multi-ton objects with rapidly-spinning metal protrusions, that'll need to be designated spaces. Designated spaces mean rate limiting - think of a taxi queue outside an airport. These will not just be allowed to fly _anywhere_ - they will have approved flight paths, because there's no way we'll allow a substantial number of flying vehicles to just fly wherever without some kind of controls, and they'll absolutely require more space between them than cars on a highway get. They've got a range of 90 miles, which is nice, but what's the turnaround time look like? How long between flights does it take to get the air taxi back in the air?
This may be a fine way for the wealthy to avoid traffic between their tower and the airport, but there's absolutely no world where this makes any kind of genuine impact on traffic or urban transit broadly.