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Comment by Aozi | Hacker News Reader

>Helicopters are expensive to maintain, noisy to fly and require trained pilots.

This part really puzzles me, I mean I guess they're better than helicopters but all those thing apply to flying cars as well, just to a lesser degree.

Getting some flying cars won't be cheap, maintaining them might be cheaper than a chopper but still not very cheap.

And if you're going to pilot one of these, and carry people around I guarantee you will have to be licensed and trained in piloting one. The regulations won't be as loose as with drones.

As for the noise, well this isn't exactly quiet.... https://youtu.be/cmdilp9LM0E?t=67

Sure it might not be as bad as a helicopter but you also rarely have two dozen helicopters zipping around near ground level. While the whole plan is to have these zipping around everywhere.

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Electric motors with fixed pitch rotors are much simpler mechanically than piston/turbine engines and fully articulated rotor blades.

Furthermore, with the drones, you have fly by wire, with control inputs translated into manoeuvring in a simple manner, so pilots will require much less skill.

For example, one has to log a certain number of landings in a helicopter. In a Volocopter, you'd literally just slide a button on the control stick up to take off, then slide it down to land, and do that N times, and you've passed that part of the requirements.

>As for the noise, well this isn't exactly quiet....

I remember listening to Elon Musk dismissing flying cars for this reason.

Well he wasn't wrong. Rotorcraft operations are or will be banned in many populated areas for exactly that reason. If they have to move a high volume of air it's going to be extremely noisy no matter what tricks they play with blade shape or whatever.

He also makes the excellent points that keeping them in the air is very energy intensive and that they pose a risk to those underneath them, in case of failure or something falling off them.

I wonder if asymmetric blades like in fans could work and if they would be any good for reducing the noise.

There has been a good deal of economic incentive for finding ways to reduce the noise of the fans in turbofans for a long time. the relatively recent introduction of chevrons on the exit end of fan nacelles shows how even minor improvements are pursued. It is unlikely that an opportunity for significant improvement has been overlooked.

Also reduces thrust.

I imagine a ridesharing / uber-like model will be dominant compared to private ownership and personal piloting. But these things are going to be incredibly annoying and disruptive -- the various drone delivery efforts already seem loud and stress-inducing. I imagine airspace restrictions on these are going to become common in the near-ish future.

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