Can I get a drone Uber to pick me up? Where exactly? Are there helipads everywhere there use to be a bus stop?
For private owners, do they build a landing area in their backyard or rooftop? Or do you drive out to the airport?
Does the paramedic-flying-themselves-to-the-accident know where to land the drone with 18 chopping blades (for stability and redundancy)?
They were specifically asking: "Why is the Silicon Valley a great Early Adopter Market for civil VTOL?" [2] (Spoiler alert: getting from A to B on the road takes too long due to traffic...)
And yes, that study imagines 200 helipads scattered throughout the Bay Area.
[1] http://nari.arc.nasa.gov/tvf [2] http://nari.arc.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/attachments/Ant...
This is assuming you have permission from the owner, of course, but that seems likely not to be a problem.
Where do you park?
What happens if the battery dies?
Why is there so much cartoon physics?
2) There's no "the battery", there are several cells, each capable of giving you enough juice for a landing if all others die. OTOH catastrophic failures are of course possible, as with cars. A parachute pushed out by a small charge can help if the altitude allows.
3) Because cartoon physics look good (and funny) on screen. I suppose the rest of Fifth Element does not look boringly realistic to you either.
But I was thinking more about Jedi jumping out of cars and not going splat on someone's windshield.
Air traffic can flow through a 2D cross-section. Which also means that vehicles don't have don't to line up like a pearl necklace. That should reduce collision probabilities if vehicles talk to each other and are able to reserve sufficiently large safety buffers around each other.
Presumably the drones' propulsion systems will have to be ducted fans for just this reason.