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Comment by mlurp | Hacker News Reader

I know it's really hard to predict what people will or won't want in the future, but... Would people want this, even if it worked really well?

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If it worked well and was free from regulation significantly limiting its use then a guess is there would be a substantial market for something like this.

Most importantly, we’ll never get to a future like what was imagined in the video if people are not taking honest shots at it. The fact that this is being given a chance is very exciting.

Thank you. We have been working on it for a long time and believe in what we do. VTOL urban mobility will happen!

Yeah, I'm not sure about that but the tech can be used with different approaches.

Owning the jetpack outright seems like a sort of "high octane for rich people entertainment" play, which you could compare to the Tesla roadster approach.

You could even have some bungee jumping/jet ski equivalent of it where you rent it for a couple hours.

Longer term, maybe you could have a jetpack/drone Uber-type merge, where you can have your jetpack delivered on demand, go where you want in a quick and entertaining way, and dispose of it until you need one for the ride back.

I'd want it if it didn't work so well to be honest. People in the Bay Area complain about how terrible public transport is. Try living in the midwest or southeast. I frequently dreamed of having my own personal Rocketman style jetpack or something to avoid that terrible commute. If I had the funds I'd buy one of these things without a second thought.

10-22 minutes of flight time doesn’t seem like it has commuter applications. I’d guess that for regulatory and safety purposes you wouldn’t be allowed to overfly a city, and you’d probably need to take off and land somewhere safe as well. This is for amusement, not flying over traffic.

If we assume that your second sentence is solvable (and I think it will be over time), the 10-22 minute number at the speeds they are talking about is huge.

For example, for someone who works at the Googleplex in Mountain View, 10 minutes gets you to Fremont (less oppressive housing market), 15-17 minutes gets you to Santa Cruz or SF/Oakland, and 22 minutes could get you to places as far away as Gilroy or Concord. All of these are spitball estimates, but they are directionally correct.

“As the crow flies” distances are deceptively short, and the impact this could have on housing markets, commuter towns, and “suburbs” could be huge. One could imagine a scenario in which the savings on housing would easily make one of these bikes look downright cheap (e.g., house in Mountain View versus similar house in Fremont). While there are issues of whether one would want to live in Mountain View or Fremont, the fact is that the option will exist in a way that sucks less than spending ridiculous amounts of time on the Bay Area highways and interstates.

Yes! Even just for the fun component.

But if it practically worked as a day to day driver it would absolutely revolutionise traffic in some cities, such as Jakarta with 18 million motorcycles all stuck in traffic.

Cant imagine all the issues you'd have to work through to make that work though. It would be a good time to invest in roof-repair and insurance businesses.

Our Speeders will be safe and self separate way better than is possible with existing air traffic control systems.

If they can get the cost down to <100K USD then I’d absolutely sign up for one, and I’m not even from the future!

Hey maybe one day we can get it down to that kind of level

We think they will. IF we can demonstrate it’s safe. Why not use a Speeder to get somewhere in 1/4 the time

Noise.

If I had the disposable income, then hell yeah. This is something straight out of a sci fi movie.

We’ll count you in... in the future!

If there were only few of those around and you could afford one and it had good range imagine how it would cut your commute. Fly to your cabin in the woods in no time (rather than sit in traffic for hours) to chill for a bit? Worth the money.

Motorcycles can already do that due to the wonders of lane splitting.

Wouldn’t you need a pilot’s license for this? If it only flies so low that you don’t, isn’t it then suuuuper dangerous?

I say the dangerous part as a former Boosted Board afficionado and current motorcycle rider

Id guess it would be less dangerous than driving than say, a turbo busa, given you have less things to crash into!

Don’t sell it short! You can crash this into everything you can crash a motorcycle into PLUS everything in the sky!

Until every other idiot driver also gets one, and now you have distracted driving and other poor behavior, but in the skies.

They said the exact same thing about cars when they first came out.

Accidentally hit a guy wire on the way...

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