Where's My Flying Car? Coming in for a Landing Soon | Hacker News Reader

Where's My Flying Car? Coming in for a Landing Soon

forbes.com

3 pointsmhb4 comments

This is an enjoyable overview article that highlights the many challenges remaining (regulation, battery, noise), and outlines where we are and some possible solutions. Surprisingly good, I thought. Also offers a taxonomy of "flying cars".

Many people are used to the amazing speed of improvement embodied in Moore's law, with doubling of performance every two years or so. My understanding is that battery tech (in particular, the specific energy (kWh/kg)) is improving much more slowly, at maybe 5% per annum, doubling only every 15 years or so.

Thus, we're still several decades away from electric aircraft competing directly with fossil fuel aircraft. But for many niches, electric aircraft (what I like to call PEVA, personal electric VTOL aircraft) are getting really interesting now.

> Current battery technology is right on the edge of where it needs to be. It means most designs have to be pretty small, very light, and short range. 1-2 people. 30 to 100 miles. Not at all like an improved conventional small airplane, if that's what you wanted. To get around these limits, you "just" need either a revolution in batteries, or hybrid fuel/electric vehicles. The path to the engineering solutions is now clear, though social problems are still many.

Having to stop and switch battery packs / vehicles even at the low end of 30 miles doesn't seem like a big deal to me as a user. And if these are deployed as part of ride-share service which owns all the equipment, which I think would make sense, I think that type of model would be feasible.

I am wondering whether one of the first use cases could be places with really bad traffic, where 20 miles by car could easily take you several hours, like Jakarta, Sao Paolo, etc. Or transfers from one airport to another in NY, London, Paris, Moscow, Silicon Valley, etc.

These niche use cases might kick-start it, and pave the way for what you describe.

Wondering, by the way, to which extent governments should get involved beyond regulation. For example, the ride-share you describe, would that constitute a natural monopoly, justifying government intervention even according to eg Milton Friedman?

Correct. While 30 miles is the low end of the predicted ranges (that's more for the pure multirotor vehicles that are nimble but not efficient) these are vehicles for that urban trip. Pick you up, take you to your destination, and when they run out of battery, do a quick trip to where they can recharge or swap. The cities that are overwhelmed with traffic have plenty of interest in this. Also useful for police, ambulance even fire (just to get crew and maybe a small pump and hose on scene before the truck gets there.)

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