Uber Hires Veteran NASA Engineer to Develop Flying Cars | Hacker News Reader

Uber Hires Veteran NASA Engineer to Develop Flying Cars

bloomberg.com

77 pointscookscar105 comments

I feel this is additional evidence for my theory that Uber is in big trouble and is trying to spin a bunch of pixie dust into some kind of dumb money exit for its increasingly angry investors.

I share your theory. I think Uber was dominant and in a great position financially until it tried to aggressively continue it's expansion into immature markets using subsidies. Their fixed costs have exploded while revenue hasn't grown as quickly.

There's no reason this technology can't/wont work from a science perspective. From an engineering, consumer, political standpoint this concept is such a non-starter. The more money Uber spends on this the quicker they'll bleed-out.

What do you define to be an "immature market" in this context?

China specifically and any other area where the fixed costs of operation for Uber outpace any marginal cost they can get off the region due to exchange rate inequalities.

The "self driving car" meme is petering out, so they are attempting to create some hype in order to keep the Ponzi investment flows churning.

By which you mean, coming to fruition?

I'm not the biggest fan of Uber on a number of issues but I think the biggest problem they have is that their investors were planning on having a monopoly on livery. That is clearly not going to happen. Flying cars and self driving cars are actually significantly more sound than their business model and are much more likely to provide a decent ROI. If and when Uber runs out of steam and its assets are liquidated the most valuable part will be research.

Lets check back on this in 10 years.

Which could be true if Uber's self driving car project lasted longer than a week. Other companies have already logged tens of thousands of road hours into their self-driving car research.

At this point, it seems more like these announcements into researching more solid business models are a red herring, like the previous commenter said. You don't need to see the end product to know if progress is being made.

They did hire some of the top self-driving car (can we call them autocars?) researchers.

>"these announcements into researching more solid business models are a red herring"

My view is that they are attempting to develop a more solid business model. Why wouldn't they try? Even if they fail to turn it into business it creates value that can sell to the companies that do succeed. Besides if they need a shiney for their investors, faking it seems to be just as much work as actually doing it.

Self driving cars will be a commodity business, there are just too many people working on it with sufficient backing (including pretty much all the car companies at this point). In the end its going to be the brand name that ensures margin.

Predictions of privately owned self driving fleets are interesting, but it would be ludicrous to assume anyone would be a monopoly supplier of those vehicles.

I still don't think I understand why self-driving cars is nothing more than a publicity stunt for them. I've heard people say it's not working, and the cars they have on the road are for show. But why can it not ever be a functioning part of their business when there are cars that can do this?

Uber expanded in large part because they did not need to buy cars or taxi medallions to compete. So, they could use subsides to attract new customers. If they now need to buy or even lease a few million cars they simply can't afford to do that globally. So, it's likely going to be the next round of well funded startup that wins.

Primarily because "be a functioning part of their business" applies to so many other companies. Manufacturers like Tesla or Audi? Sure. Car rental and fleet management companies like Avis or Enterprise? Certainly could be a part of their business. Local couple who owns a car wash and can afford to buy 2-3 self-driving vehicles and keep them clean? Why not, I'd give someone local a try.

What's unique about Uber's know-how to ensure their domination (or in absence of domination, reasonable margins) in the segment?

Or a less evil version of the same: dazzle the investors they already have lest they decide to cut losses before all that tasty runway is burnt to completion.

With all the investment Uber already has (maybe more than their complete target market could ever be worth?) I suspect that they don't really hope for more. Some of their predatory pricing schemes might actually be a panic reaction to not having stopped raising earlier.

It's an old salesman's technique, to distract the client from current problems with the product, by selling shiny new features. It's similar to distracting a baby from the problems of life, with your shiny keys, in lieu of more appropriate toys.

Or they think burning money on this guy is worth it to get engineers to join the company because it's "cool."

Can you elaborate on how think this development helps to achieve an exit? Also what do you mean by "dumb money"? I ask because I am sincerely interested in hearing your theory.

So Uber is basically giving a flying fuck to investors by calling it a Flying car.

Their business model has no barrier to entry. Uber fares are subsidized by something like more than half, and as soon as Uber runs out of investor money, there's going to be nothing stopping someone like Lyft from doing exactly what they do now. They need some kind of capital, be it self-driving cars or whatever, to maintain their current dominant position.

Their problem is execution - they don't seem to sucseed in true ride sharing(few people share the same car), which is a protectable business, once won.

On the other hand, some of their competitors, like via seem to manage to do that quite well(altough currently supported by VC money).

So i wonder, what's the secret that Uber can't seem to copy ?

"Their business model has no barrier to entry."

Critical mass of drivers, particularly within a specific market area - and brand - are definitely barriers to entry.

There are network externalities for sure.

If you go to city ABC and 'everyone is on Uber' - as a consumer, you'll probably just use Uber.

Drivers? Well, they'll just sign up for Uber if there's little else.

A 'new market entrant' will have a 'chicken and egg' problem in terms of signing up drivers and riders.

A true 'lower barrier to entry' business would be like a hot-dog stand - no cost, you set up beside the other guy, you can take just as much business. Your benefit scales roughly linearly with the number of stands you have, and because you have more, does not really give customers incentive to buy from you etc..

So there are 'competitors' but there are also at least some barriers, on a locale by locale basis.

There are other barriers - such as the ability to fund/lobby (and bribe) all of the various political entities that could oppose you - Uber has been pretty aggressive at winning these things and that costs $$$.

I've got both Uber and Lyft on my phone, which I guess could be analogous to having two hot dog stands on the same block. Drivers can switch between the two just as easily.

You're right though, they do have a well-established brand, and they have spent a lot of effort in getting around all sorts of legal problems. I wonder, though, if the legal things that Uber has paved the way on would ever make it easier for some other Uber clone to take up the same business without all of the legal hurdles, since they've already established some sort of precedent.

Yes, but you don't have 'ABC lift' on your phone. Why? Because ABC has almost no drivers, and because it has almost no drivers, no customers, which means it's hard to attract drivers. - hence, network externalization as a barrier.

There are tons of Uber-like companies, and you've never heard of them largely for this reason.

> Yes, but you don't have 'ABC lift' on your phone. Why? Because ABC has almost no drivers, and because it has almost no drivers, no customers, which means it's hard to attract drivers. - hence, network externalization as a barrier.

Actually, I do. But I only have 'ABC lift" for local, native areas that I am in continuously.

I tend to use Lyft when I am out of my home area.

If it's a company market, price signaling and a reasonable market for both companies, long term, seems possible.

This strikes me as pretty pathetic effort by Uber to make itself appear forward looking

Flying is not a valid commute solution and never will be because of physics. All things equal, the energy requirements to change elevation will be too great to justify adoption.

The system only becomes useful/safe if you "stack" vehicles on roadways. What happens when one has a failure and crashes?

This is either market signaling or another thing Uber will bleed money onto.

> Flying is not a valid commute solution and never will be because of physics. All things equal, the energy requirements to change elevation will be too great to justify adoption.

There are lots of technical roadblocks to feasible flying cars but the cost of the potential energy to change elevation is not one of them. The optimal altitude flown would be lower for shorter trips, and when normal cars must change elevation (i.e, drive over hills/mountains), they do not use so much fuel as to make the trips infeasible.

In a flying car, much more energy is used fighting air drag and gravity drag.

> The optimal altitude flown would be lower for shorter trips

Where does the column of flying cars go? Do they expand vertically or horizontally as traffic increases?

In the underpopulated area's of the US where 10% of the population lives this is a feasible mode of transit, what about the 90% that actually have traffic?

If the cars broaden vertically it's a safety risk, if the cars broaden horizontally it's a violation of property rights (and a different safety risk), if the cars don't broaden it rapidly becomes inefficient and dangerous.

Also, with the advent of KERS and other regenerative systems cars will be able to recapture the bulk of energy consumed for elevation changes. To my knowledge there's no such effective system for planes. So the efficiency on cars is still higher than air vehicles.

> If the cars broaden vertically it's a safety risk,

That's the evidence you're giving to dismiss the ability of flying cars to distribute over multiple altitude? Once we've accepted the hypothetical that technology allows for a single car to fly from A to B safely (which is almost certainly automated), it seems clear that having cars move at different altitude will be trivially possible.

> Also, with the advent of KERS and other regenerative systems cars will be able to recapture the bulk of energy consumed for elevation changes. To my knowledge there's no such effective system for planes. So the efficiency on cars is still higher than air vehicles.

No one is disputing that regular cars are more efficient than flying cars. But trucks are less efficient than container ships, and we still use the former when the latter is impossible or too slow. You said "Flying is not a valid commute solution and never will be because of physics", and this just isn't true.

> Once we've accepted the hypothetical that technology allows for a single car to fly from A to B safely (which is almost certainly automated), it seems clear that having cars move at different altitude will be trivially possible.

In real world we can't accept this because there are always unpredictable factors, we can only say that probability of a safe flight in a single car is say 99.999%. Then if there are 20 cars one right above another, then probability that none of them crash is only 99.98%, and it could damage all cars below it, so the resulting probability of safe flight in a car reduces to something of order 99.99% instead of 99.999% for a single car. And 99.99% is really not safe enough for everyday flying during many years.

Avoiding a car that crashes in the lane next to you is a lot harder than avoiding a car that falls 100 feet from above. Yet we have multi-lane highways.

That's an asinine statement if I've ever read one.

I've been present for 2 highways collisions, avoiding them is super easy. Which is why full lane closures and multi-car pile-ups are as infrequent as they are relative to the frequency of two car accidents.

A vehicle that falls from 100 feet above will be accelerating unlike vehicles in an accident on a highway which will rapidly decelerate.

Furthermore, you now have multiple vehicles taking evasive action based on dynamic predictions that cannot incorporate a collision. The second that one car hits another you're going to lose a chunk of your column from pachinko like bouncing.

Now, instead of a small mechanical failure you can have drastic loss of life because all of the occupants plummeted to their death.

Do you work for Uber?

Upvoted because you're right, but not sure why you felt it necessary to be so hostile

I'm trying to reduce the hostility of my posts. What parts of this do you feel was hostile?

Edit: We've hit the end of the reply chain. I see your point about both the opening and closing sentences. Is there any way to say the first one without coming off as hostile? My goal/point was trying to demonstrate how patently wrong the earlier statements were.

I commend your desire to improve your posts. That's something that's always on my mind as well.

From my unsolicited, third-party perspective, two things jump out at me.

- You could do without the first sentence entirely.

- The insinuation that the parent is possibly a shill (an Uber employee)

The rest of it is fairly neutral.

Most cool. Proud of you. grzm said it exactly.

My goal/point was trying to demonstrate how patently wrong the earlier statements were.

The evidence or examples you provide should make that clear. Unless you have very strong irrefutable evidence, I would hesitate making any absolute statement declaring someone wrong. What does it gain you? No one likes to be told outright they're wrong. The goal shouldn't be to score points: it should be to reach common understanding.

If this is something you'd like to cultivate further, you might find the references in my profile useful. I refer to them myself regularly.

I'll assume based on your comments below that you retract the hostile language, so I'll now reply.

As I mentioned earlier, the future we are talking about is one with self-driving cars. The fact that the vehicles are accelerating is much less of a concern than sheer number of seconds allowed for an automated system to take evasive maneuvers. (Coordinating evasion is also much easier for automated systems, and traffic collision avoidance systems are widely used in planes, but this is a secondary point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_collision_avoidance_sy... )

Your anecdotal experience is not really informative. But what is informative are car and plane accident rates, and the fact that altitude separation for planes is already a standard practice for avoiding collisions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_(aeronautics)#Verti...

It is a strong contributor to the fact that mid-air collisions are much more rare than the multi-car pile-ups from having cars in adjacent lanes. As I read your logic, you would assert that planes would be better off flying parallel, all at the same altitude, so as to avoid the need for grade separation. But this is not how air traffic is managed. Yes of course planes are able to separate out further horizontally than cars can (and just as a flying car would be able to), and this reduces the risk of collision debris dropping down on top of any other random plane. But this clearly does not mean that if, for whatever reason, planes became more horizontally restricted, they would make less use of vertical space.

> allows for a single car to fly from A to B safely

"Safely" will never mean a 0% crash rate. So, when a failure occurs that causes the vehicle to crash uncontrollably the property damage and casualty level will be determined largely by the vertical density of the vehicles.

> But trucks are less efficient than container ships, and we still use the former when the latter is impossible or too slow

Two issues with this:

a) the cost difference between container ships and trucks is not so large as that of air and ground travel

b) the reason that less efficient trucks are used is exactly because there's an economic demand for delivery and it is the price/time optimal solution.

For someone with a commute that can be shortened from 90 minutes to 15 minutes and makes in excess of $250K a year this is a solution. For everyone else it doesn't make sense.

The arguments you're making are no more convincing than historical ones like "it will never make economic sense for an individual to pay for their own computer" or "elevators are an inherently dangerous form of travel".

It'll make sense for us to travel to mars, colonize outer space, cure cancer, and a whole host of other things that are presently impossible.

Computers and elevators aren't comparable analogies, perhaps the jetpack is?

Bridge chokepoints and other small hops over bodies of water / mountains are a great case for flying cars. It would be great for seattle, manhattan, SF, hawaii, islands, etc.

You also don't need to build much infrastructure other than landing/takeoff sites. Large infrastructure alone, especially in a place like the USA is a big blocker.

> Flying is not a valid commute solution and never will be because of physics. All things equal, the energy requirements to change elevation will be too great to justify adoption.

That only ensures that flying cars will always be more expensive than ground cars, not that per capita income will always be too low to have mass adoption of flying cars.

> That only ensures that flying cars will always be more expensive than ground cars, not that per capita income will always be too low to have mass adoption of flying cars.

True, but the economics of energy/housing/transit indicate that there never will be mass adoption if it's also the more expensive option.

Cost is not the only concern, if it was then all cars would be the most energy efficient possible and Hummers with similar fuel efficiency to small Cessna aircraft would never have been made.

The ownership cost of a small Cessna drastically exceeds that of a hummer (purchase price + certification + maintenance). I'll take your word that they have equivalent fuel efficiencies.

Cost isn't a big deal when it's less than a 50% increase, we're talking 3-5x here. This is equivalent not to a Hummer but to a Ferrari, that's a difference in sale volume that makes a flying car unit unsustainable give the increased non-traditional expenses.

> True, but the economics of energy/housing/transit indicate that there never will be mass adoption if it's also the more expensive option.

That depends largely on any negative value that's charged against living in an undesirable location, and on the subjective value a person ascribes to living in a desired location. And that subjective value can remain constant, while the cost of energy and transit decrease, and the economic value created by the person increases.

Yes, it would probably be economically more efficient to live in low-cost housing projects within a few minutes walk of the offices of megacorporations. But millions of people (76% of Americans, according to this 2009 survey: http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/acs-15.pdf) choose to drive an single-occupant automobile to work, averaging a 25-minute commute each way. And few would give up their acre of land and private home to live in an apartment closer to work.

If you could take a high-speed helicopter from Monterey to an office in Silicon Valley for $5 and a 15-minute flight, instead of hours of your time, or $500 in helicopter costs, would you really live in on-campus housing because it was more economically efficient? Yes, flying a helicopter for an hour takes a lot of energy: on the order of 1,000 kilowatts per hour. And yes, helicopters are really expensive and niche. But technology is constantly decreasing both the cost of that energy and the difficulty and operating expenses of flying machines.

> on the order of 1,000 kilowatts per hour

1000 kW, or 1000 kWh per h. That's the beauty of P = Power = W/t = Energy / Time.

I was trying to convert gallons of Jet A per hour into something comparable with battery packs which have capacity measured in kWh, and derped hard. Thanks for the correction.

My formal training is in mechanical engineering and economics. You are completely right about the gradual reduction in cost and increases in efficiency over time for all mechanical technology.

There are two things I feel you neglect:

a) These increases happen in parallel, meaning that as air vehicles get better so too do ground vehicles. Meaning it's unlikely for the relative advantage of cars to change with technology improvements.

b) I can state the last sentence because of the physics and engineering fundamentals that go into ground and air vehicles. There are hard and fast limits to the physical world, air vehicles have to butt up against a lot more of them than ground vehicles do.

As air and ground vehicles become less expensive, the real question is what happens to the difference between them.

The point I was trying to make (rather obliquely, I admit) was that as mechanical technology improves the difference between variations ceases to matter. If air transport goes from $500 to $5, compared to ground transport making an even bigger drop from $5 to $0.01, people aren't necessarily going to choose ground over air. An infinitely more efficient $0 walking option exists in both cases. They're going to chose air because $5 isn't enough to care; their time is worth an order of magnitude more than the cost of the transport.

The same economics driving everyone to live near work and ride bicycles?

Tell that to all the Chinese companies that are in the midst of marketing hexacopters for city transportation...

I'm interested in marketing brochures of said companies. Pray tell where can I find it?

Of course, here you go:

http://www.ehang.com/ehang184

There is also a German project, the e-volo.

http://www.e-volo.com/index.php/en/

Where the later (the Volocopter) is more advanced in its development, I think (they've already had unmanned and manned test flights, and preliminary government approvals), as well as a better concept all in all (what with 18 rotors above the cockpit, rather than on 8 rotors on knee-level).

Full disclosure: I've invested a trifling sum in the Volocopter, so I'm a believer... :-)

> Flying is not a valid commute solution and never will be because of physics.

For reference, a Cessna 172 flies around 110 knots = 125 miles per hour, and uses about 10 gallons per hour, so it gets about 12 mpg.

Granted, that's pretty bad, but that's about 1950's technology, and it's not orders of magnitudes.

And in 3D you have MUCH more space (in fact, one reason that there are so relatively few mid air collisions is just the fact that "the sky is big".)

So, I don't think aviation is out a priori "because physics".

I'm glad you make this comparison because it leads directly to my point about why flight (in these forms) is infeasible as a broad consumer commute technology.

In 1950 a car cost ~$1.5K in the US, GDP per capita was ~9.6K. So it was around 0.16 of GDP per Capita to purchase a new car.

In 2016 GDP per capita had risen to $53k with a new car costing between 17K and 33K depending on how you look at it. This is 0.32 to 0.62 of GDP. More, but not horrible.

A Cessna costs $160K, a 3x factor compared to GDP. So for around the price of a house (or down-payment) you can own a depreciating mechanical liability that enables you to commute marginally faster...

The economics aren't there.

True, economics aren't there. Question is whether that's because of unsurmountable physical limitations, or because of current engineering and current regulations. And that is not obvious.

For what it's worth, I don't really see personal aviation take off anytime soon anywhere near as much as personal driving has - but some niches might become feasible with personal electronic VTOL aircraft (PEVA).

There are about 2000 Cessnas produced every year, globally. If you only produced about 2000 cars per year, they'd cost on the order of $160,000 as well. The key is to produce tens of thousands of them (and more standardized than the Cessnas) so you can get mass production to work.

And anyway, even if it cost that much, it's still a viable route for commuting using a rideshare service like Uber if you have 3-4 people sharing the same vehicle and you're shaving off 2 hours of commuting each day (500 hours extra per year at $30/hour gives you $15,000 extra per year PER PERSON).

"The sky is big" is a fallacy in aviation because aircraft don't move unconstrained in 3D space. Typically they are restricted to narrow corridors where collision probability greatly increases.

I imagine the same applies to air commute, considering most people will be converging into a small number of waypoints.

That was my assessment as well. Even worse for commuter vehicles because of the various property laws and regional egress requirements.

A couple of points:

a) you don't have to stick to airways. They're largely for ease of planning and navigation with ground-based navigation aids (NDBs, VORs). You can easily fly off airways, and (in general aviation planes during visual flight) nearly always do.

b) with the advent of GPS, "direct" flight routes (not involving airways) are becoming increasingly common.

c) The "big sky" is not a fallacy. Think about it: first, on the ground you can only drive where there are streets. In the sky, you can fly everywhere (even on a 2-D plane), plus then you have the third dimension. There is plenty of space, and congestion won't be a problem unless regulatory/technical issues impose bottlenecks. Airports are natural bottlenecks, but what is envisioned here are VTOL aircraft, so the number of suitable take off and landing places would multiply.

d) The "navigation paradox" [1] is that improved precision in navigation leads to increased risk of collision, because where in the past airplanes where only approximately on an airway (and would most likely miss each other in case of ATC mistake), now they're precisely on the airway (and will collide in case of ATC mistake), see the case of the GOL and Embraer in Brazil [2]. However, that is a shortcoming of current ATC practices, not inherent in flying.

e) I don't understand your point regarding property law. You can hop on a Cessna at Palo Alto or San Carlos airport and fly over the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, Oracle, Stanford, SLAC, San Jose, with no problem. The airspace is there and it's open.

Bottom line: with modern navigation methods, air space congestion will only become a problem after personal aircraft have become tremendously popular and prevalent, if at all.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navigation_paradox

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gol_Transportes_A%C3%A9reos_...

>Flying is not a valid commute solution and never will be because of physics. All things equal, the energy requirements to change elevation will be too great to justify adoption.

Which is why birds only ever fly long distances, if it's just a few miles they hop it.

To be fair, birds neither have wheels nor spent most of their evolution in a world with paved roads.

But that doesnt support my snarky comment, so I'll just say all abstractions are leaky and stand by it.

If we approach the problem from a perspective of "How to make flying a viable commute option?" we can come up with atleast a few scenarios

1) Cities near water bodies like SFO, NYC, Miami or even Chicago can benefit from over water flying cars. This provides some safety while making more areas livable within a short commute to downtown.

2) Places like Mumbai, Bangalore where car ownership has outpaced the governments ability to create roads causing massive traffic jams can be served by a vertical stacking approach you mentioned and leap frog the western worlds freeway model. By creating pre-defined paths in the air and having only autonomous flying cars, the governments can save money on building roads, parking etc and also provide a level of safety against rogue drivers and airspace violation

The original Hyperloop design relied on an air cushion, but nobody claimed that it was flying. A seaplane is similarly not considered a flying car, and is unlikely to be efficient. Nor is a hydroplane.

As for cities with traffic jams, expecting governments that don't get enough in taxes to improve infrastructure to solve that by expecting the citizens to pay tremendous amounts for flying cars is unreasonable.

Yes, I think one of the first places where personal electric VTOL aircraft (PEVA) will take off are places where the rich use helicopters now - Sao Paolo, Jakarta, etc., basically geographically compact places with terrible traffic and massive income inequality.

> Cities near water bodies like SFO, NYC, Miami or even Chicago can benefit from over water flying cars"

I don't agree. While there may be less impediments to putting that traffic over the waterways the challenges are still significant.

Just using NYC as an example:

A high density of bridges.

A High volume of existing commercial and passenger boat traffic.

A number of busy heliports are located along the waterways.

And although the rivers could help you navigate you up or downtown they provide no efficient means of going across town further limiting this as a viable option.

The fact that big money is being funneled into the idea makes it more plausible that ever.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-09/welcome-t...

Theres a lot of R&D going on behind the scenes, it no longer a lone wolf undertaking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g6cCYoDWzM

Its likely all these personal air vehicle will fly-by-wire; perhaps Uber leveraging Otto's core algorithm for other uses?

The fact that big money is being funneled into the idea makes it more plausible that ever.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-09/welcome-t...

Theres a lot of R&D going on behind the scenes, it no longer a lone wolf undertaking.

Its likely all these personal air vehicle will fly-by-wire; perhaps Uber leveraging Otto's core algorithm for other uses? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g6cCYoDWzM

> The fact that big money is being funneled into the idea makes it more plausible that ever.

Big money has been funneled into a number of pipe dreams before, it didn't make them practical.

There's a flying car company, Terrafugia (1), that came out of MIT ten years ago and they have working prototypes. There's an old YouTube video here (2) and apparently they have "persuaded the FAA to grant Terrafugia a waiver of weight and stall-speed limits so it can self-certify its Transition flying car as a light sport aircraft" (3).

Not sure of the safety implications or the commercial viability of flying cars for Uber, but there are people out there who want to be able to own or fly an aircraft and not have to deal with various hassles that come with traditional aircraft ownership.

1. https://www.terrafugia.com/

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnF2yua4KIw

3. http://aviationweek.com/technology/faa-light-sport-aircraft-...

Unfortunately, not really out in production yet, just like the amphibian Icon A5 [1].

With aviation certification requirements, it takes huge amounts of time and capital to get it from concept to prototype/first flight, and unfortunately also from prototype/first flight to production and customers.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICON_A5

There's also Moller Skycar[1], a vaporware that has been in the works since last 30 years.

[1] http://moller.com/moller_skycar400.html

Projects like this will eventually produce an airborne commuter vehicle, but:

* It will resemble a scaled-up quadcopter (for which there's already an early prototype: http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/8/11882458/ehang-passenger-qu...)

* It will only happen when batteries are much better than they are now -- more energy density, longer lived, more efficient.

The bottom line is that this idea, like so many around us, is waiting for decent batteries to be invented.

I don't quite get that the eHang commands such a presence in the public mind. With the rotors where they are, it looks almost designed to maim and cripple passengers and bystanders.

The Volocopter, by way of contrast, has the rotors above the cockpit, has 18 rotors for redundancy, and is actually already flying for both unmanned and manned test flights, with preliminary approval by German authorities. In my view, it's a more sensible concept that's also further advanced already.

http://volocopter.com/

Agreed though that the big problem for electric flight for now are the batteries. Note though that the issue is not so much energy density (energy per volume), but specific energy (energy per mass), currently at around 400 kWh/kg.

Fossile fuel has a specific energy so much higher that it still wins hands down, even though a piston engine converts only about 10% of that energy into mechanical energy.

> I don't quite get that the eHang commands such a presence in the public mind.

I think it's only because they're the first, their craft is really a rough prototype, and in five years they'll likely be forgotten.

> With the rotors where they are, it looks almost designed to maim and cripple passengers and bystanders.

That's my reason for thinking they're engineers who aren't thinking of the needs and vulnerabilities of end users -- they aren't really thinking about end-user issues.

> The Volocopter, by way of contrast ...

* Much safer design, better protection against any single-point failure (the eHang can't afford to lose even one of its props and remain controllable).

* But soo ugly. :)

To me, the first large quad with protective shields around its props will signal a level of seriousness consistent with the supposed goal (end-user acceptance, non-prototype).

When does Uber run out of money? I think the timeline on their R&D projects is longer than their runway, and I'm not sure how many more people would be willing to write Uber a 10 digit check.

They've raised a lot of money in the last 18 months (likely in anticipation of an evolving financial environment) so I suspect they actually have a couple years left if they're careful.

It's like they're stumbling forward blindly hoping that at some point their books balance.

I also forgot they bought Otto. I think self-driving cars are a long way away, but I believe self-driving trucks could potentially be viable in a few years - and the market is massive. Maybe they can commercialize that soon enough to save themselves. Apart from the technology though, I'm sure the regulations (something Uber loves) and customer relations could be a tough nut to crack.

You are completely right. Shipping automation has a lot of potential.

I don't think Uber has any strong competitive advantage in the self-driving space relative to all of the other players. I've been wrong about these things before. The thing that may put them at a disadvantage is their history of ignoring regulations compared to companies like Google. Even if they develop the technology quickly enough they may be screwed because a competitive technology is the one that gets licensed by the DOT because other companies play by the rules.

I'm biased because I used to work with many of the people Uber hired for self-driving cars, but they bought really great engineering talent. Great talent doesn't mean much though if the management is bad, and after their whole illegal testing in California debacle it makes me cautious.

That said, I didn't realize just how far ahead Google/Waymo is with regards to self-driving cars. If you check out the report of autonomous vehicles (HN "discussion" here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13554796) they are already operating on highways with zero problems! The data is limited, but that is promising.

> I'm biased because I used to work with many of the people Uber hired for self-driving cars, but they bought really great engineering talent

I think that's a fair perspective and I don't discount the capabilities and talents of the people working at Uber, it's the people running Uber that I don't believe are capable of steering the ship.

A friend of mine who has been an executive at a couple tech companies have chatted about the "no grown-up" phenomenon. Essentially, you can have a ton of super-talented people but if there isn't a 'grown-up' (irrespective of age) providing the managerial/fiduciary discipline (think Steve Jobs and Elon Musk as the epitome of this) then the challenges of running a successful business will quickly outpace the efforts of the talented engineers working there.

The number of teams/engineers that unilaterally work on overlapping projects or projects that don't serve any purpose can rapidly drown the needed forward progress.

FWIW, I think highway driving is the easy part (very controlled environment, no sudden cross traffic, etc). City driving is the hard part.

I don't get it, is this hiring like a PR stunt?

I would thinking creating your own maps and autonomous driving platforms is already fairly ambitious, but flying cars?

Rant: Since when did VTOL == 'flying car'? A flying car is a hybrid, dual-use vehicle. Is a helicopter a flying car? A Harrier jet? VTOL would be great for an actual flying car and it would be great for small, personal aircraft, but that doesn't make an aircraft that has it a flying car.

Absolutely. We need a new word for this new category of aircraft (like the eHang, Volocopter, etc.), but "flying car" it is not.

I'm in favour of Personal Electric VTOL Aircraft, PEVA.

This could have equally been an article on the Onion

Funnier on Bloomberg! Sort of. I guess they don't do physics there.

I love the closing:

"Kalanick’s bet on Uber Elevate is another indication that while Silicon Valley seems on the surface to be consumed with politics and protests these days, the march into the future continues apace."

Yeah, okay. Oh Uber is based where?

They are gonna hire this guy next to research Compost Fueled Cars: https://youtu.be/DkGMY63FF3Q

Actually I remember an article from the local paper here (on Kaua'i) where someone on the island had made just that.. though I think the compost was making biofuel of some sort

Flying cars of the 2010s seem striking similar to solar cars for the 1980s. A few expensive prototypes here and there, some great pontificating from leading engineers, but no serious consumer model.

Depends... I think we are really close to have viable "flying cars" in the form of electric or even hybrid gas-electric multirotors... Give it 5-10 years Im sure we will begin to see multirotors being used for personal transportation.

Predicated on advances in battery tech. The rest is there, agreed.

Flying cars aren't the future. I think it's much more in Jetpacks. Once power density is better than Jet-A, we'll be in business for some great options.

Probably dangerous as all get out, but that's part of the fun.

https://medium.com/@6StringMerc/for-christmas-2016-i-give-th...

Interesting, I didn't realize Mark had resigned from LaRC. I'd be interested to hear a more complete take on his opinions about NASA Aeronautics, because he sounded a bit disillusioned.

The big caveat when comparing to industry efforts, of course, is that NASA Aero, by design, is not an airline, or an airframe manufacturer, or a regulator. It's an R&D outfit that still very much follows the structure of its predecessor, NACA.

And this is why giving cruddy companies insane amounts of cash works out well for humankind. Few sane companies would have been able to put significant resources behind something like this without a solid lead in hand.

I never understood the point of flying cars. Do we not already have those but call them airplanes?

Flying cars seem infeasible to operate for the mass consumer as they (like airplanes) require extensive training to operate safely.

The idea is that they are self-driving flying cars, so consumers don't need training.

While the physics of flight are more complex than driving, the environment is far less complex (straight-line between points, few obstacles along the way). Flight is better suited to automation, and in fact we already have very reliable autopilots and computer-enhanced airplanes.

That said, I think the fuel costs of flying mean it will never be competitive with driving, based on cost.

I still do not understand the difference between a flying car and an air plane.

Terrible name, indeed.

Flying car sort of implies:

* can fly and drive on the road.

While there are concepts along those lines (e.g. the Terrafugia Transformation), that's not what this is about.

What distinguishes this new bred of aircraft is:

* VTOL, so not bound to a traditional airport

* simple control ("like a car"), so don't need a pilot. That distinguishes them from a helicopter, which is harder to fly than a fixed wing plane.

* maybe also autonomous flying and collision avoidance, so more like next-gen cars.

I find PEVA (personal electric VTOL aircraft) more descriptive.

Can we all please agree that if something is not designed for road use, it can hardly be categorized as a car?

Im all for stuff like this, but "flying cars" implies something that is practical as both a road vehicle and a flying contraption of sorts...

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