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Comment by ctack | Hacker News Reader

Uber is aiming to be a big player in the future autonomous space, but seeing how difficult a problem level 5 autonomy is proving for cars, they are looking at the sky taxi thing instead because autonomy is going to be actually achievable in that space.

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I don't know about the US, but herearound the sky and what flies there is massively regulated.

And those are regulations you don't want to fuck around with.

You may be, for example, flying over military controlled airspace. I don't see it that anybody can just jump into his flying car and just fuzz around at her or his discretion.

There's a reason why flight plans are filed for every flight.

Regulation is something autonomous vehicles will deal with a lot better than human pilots.

That is Uber's secret sauce - they defeat regulation better than anyone

But automating navigation for helicopters is much easier than for cars. At least until every other person has a personal helicopter, but even then the problem is probably much easier to solve.

I'm still amazed that they can afford either of the two projects. I understand their reasoning for wanting autonomous vehicles, it's basically needed for their business to make sense. From the investors point of view however: why not drop the current taxi business, which is just a money burning pit, and then solely invest in the autonomous vehicles?

I think it’s to keep a horse in the race.

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