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It is a helicopter then.

Unless it is significantly cheaper to operate or quieter, I don't understand the benefits of these new vehicles/ form factor.

Maybe the hope is that cities will not regulate them, but I am not sure why they would. Please enlighten me if there something else obvious I missed. If both Boeing and Airbus are working on it, there must be something else.

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AFAIK they are intended to be quieter, cheaper, and safer. The same story as electric vehicles - fewer moving parts means lower maintenance costs, but particularly important when talking about air vehicles is that it also means fewer things which can break during flight. Helicopters are nasty dangerous, largely because they’re maintenance heavy and there’s little redundancy. “Drones” could address both of these.

Also much easier to fly I imagine.

The Uber Elevate white paper probably has a lot more info: https://www.uber.com/elevate.pdf/

They use electricity, so cheaper is highly likely. Also 50 mile (80 km) range is pretty short, so very short-haul... probably initially good for VIPs who just want to avoid big city traffic. Also it looks somewhat smaller and lighter than a regular helicopter, so perhaps it could land in places where helicopters aren't normally allowed?

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