The flying taxi market may be ready for takeoff: study
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
But like you said, safety is harder when you are airborne. Can't imagine what NYC would be like with 1000 helicopters in the sky.
New economic realities are upon us.
We haven't seen the kind of reduction above poster is positing in electric cars yet, and that's beyond the 10 year window (and we aren't going to, as drive train isn't enough of the cost).
It looks like they are here to stay, but I would warn they still make a lot less cars at a lower profitability than most major car makers.
I can see how you might change a $200 15-20 min helicopter ride into a $120 15-20 min VTOL ride profitably, but hard to see how it becomes a $60 ride any time soon...
You have that on general aviation too, today.
> I can see how you might change a $200 15-20 min helicopter ride into a $120 15-20 min VTOL ride profitably, but hard to see how it becomes a $60 ride any time soon...
Last I looked, range was an enormous problem.
Let's see. 20 min VTOL ride. 30 minutes reserve "fuel" or 1 hour if IFR. +more "fuel" to reach the alternate airport (if fixed wing) or the nearest landing site. These are recommendations for GA, if you are doing this commercially the requirements may be different (tend to be stricter)
You can get away with a lot if you only fly in clear blue skies in locations with very stable weather. You still need to have plenty of range for unforeseen events. You don't burn off batteries when flying either, so empty or full batteries weight the same.
These things won't get cheap in the short term. Non-helicopter efficient VTOL is pretty hard to do, that doesn't help costs either. Companies would do well in trying to solve one problem first (flying 'vtol' taxis) before trying to solve the other problem (electric airplanes).
Helicopter infrastructure is so cheap that there are many places with a pad that is just used for emergencies.
So I could see a path to 10x improvement by eliminating the pilot and keeping utilization high. Even if you budget $100/hour maintenance cost, the cost can be far lower than conventional helicopters.
This is called putting the bell on the cat. Or Belling the cat.
The sky is mostly empty space and landing zones are clearly marked and purpose built. You don't have to worry about any pedestrians or unpredictable drivers or roads.
Actually you do. Most airspace is uncontrolled, where the collision avoidance algorithm is "see and avoid". There are plenty of airspace users who do not broadcast any kind of beacon apart from being visible to other pilots.
You could demand that they all wear electronic beacons. Such technologies do exist. However they aren't currently predicted to work well enough in the expected congestion created by large numbers of autonomous aircraft in the future. And it faces most of the same practical challenges as putting beacons on pedestrians and all other road users.
An electric aircraft can have multiple engines (to wit: an octocopter) rather than just one a turbine that is a both high tolerance technological marvel and high maintenance. They don't need to long high speed blades whirring above to achieve VTOL, they can have small propellers in cowling's. They don't have to carry lots of highly flammable fuel that is highly likely to start a fire in suburbia ifthey become ubiquitous. With luck they will have solid state batteries. They don't need spinning wings under high stress, they can have passive wings that glide naturally. They don't need a big heavy engine to generate the power needed for takeoff, as powerful electric engines are powerful yet small, light and easily redirected without a gear train.
A lot of things change. Admittedly some are way worse for electric, like flight endurance - and so it's no coincidence we are talking about taxi's here, not long haul fights. But when it comes to taxi's most things are improvements over ICE engines we have now. Thinking it is just about the presence or absence of a pilot is simplifying things way too much.
Source: https://www.aneclecticmind.com/2017/08/07/about-helicopter-f...
My team and I published a whitepaper in 2016 that goes into detail on the cost projections for electric VTOL: uber.com/elevate.pdf.
You don't quite need a 10x reduction -- helis are ~$10/passenger-mile today and an Uber X is about $1.50, so you need a 6-7x reduction to be on par. You get ~30% from the new vehicle (electric, more efficient) and you get the remainder from higher utilization and low factors enabled by the lower cost and noise. Scaled manufacturing and autonomy get you to ~$0.50/passenger-mile which is on par with the variable price of car ownership.
The FAA is extremely supportive of certifying these aircraft -- here is the Administrator Dickson speaking to that directly yesterday: https://evtol.com/news/dickson-faa-15-evtol-aircraft/
Add -- the utilization and load factor efficiencies apply to helicopters today, we are proving that with Uber Copter in NYC: https://www.uber.com/blog/new-york-city/uber-copter/ -- ~$200 from Manhattan to JFK
Basically having their fun at your expense and about 2000 - 20000 other people that have to hear it.
It's getting worse. I feel like the flight school things is extremely out of control. It used to be a few flights a day at specific airports. Now flight schools are operating out of pretty much any city with greater than about 15000 people, and what is worse they flight right over the town, and then up to 200 miles out. Then they reach their loop area and just loop. You end up hearing them pass over about 30 times an hour when they do this.
So I just cringe when I see comments in here about how the sky is mostly unused space, why don't we just cram it full of noisy shit.
As an economist, I will reiterate: never trust surveys. Even disguised ones.
The moment it causes a death, the dates will be pushed ahead by a few years, and VC money will dry down meanwhile.
1) Urban areas have a lot of towers and wires to fly low
2) A single accident with pax will kill an air-taxi business
3) comfortable 4 pax helicopters are $2 million each, so aerospace and affordable don't go together. Eclipse tried to make a cheap jet using "friction-stir welding", so that was the gimmick last time around.
4) FAA has "one level of safety" - there's no exception for wannabe "disrupters"
Even operationally, a part 121 operator (schedule airline) has the strictest requirements, followed by a part 135 operator (on-demand charter), followed by a part 91 (private, not for hire).
But if the taxis do not require pilots (perfectly reasonable for air travel) and electric engines do require much less maintenance, satisfying 135 regulations can become easier than satisfying 91 with normal planes.
Disruption is done by increasing the quality of your equipment. It's perfectly viable, although it has to follow a slow certification schedule.
No, you're misinformed. From an operating standpoint, when you carry more than 10 pax, all operators are treated like an airline. There are different Parts but the end effect is the same for 121 and 135:
https://www.avweb.com/features/full-text-of-the-faas-new-one...
"One level of safety" is an FAA term, and describes their philosophy when there are paying passengers.
The biggest problem short taxi like air travel tend forget about is the infrastructure. Your going to need a lot of landing and take off locations for it to be any use. You just can't land anywhere unless you have pilot that can see areas clear of cars, power lines, and people or other hazards. So any autonomous system is going to need lots landing and take off areas. Even with a pilot they probably would still be needed.
The next largest costs of an air-craft is generally initial purchase. Then the required on going maintenance to ensure the air-frame remains safe. While an all aircraft electric may reduce the mechanical complexity. It does nothing to reduce the labour cost per hour required to inspect an air-frame, and repair. Also unlikely traditional aircraft a battery pack is more complex than a fuel tank, any problems with it can be dangerous for any aircraft that do not use a fixed wing design.
Also with a completely electric air craft energy density is even more important than a car. This effectively limits them to short distances. While energy costs may be lower than fuel. Fuel for small aircraft is cheaper than a lot people realize.
Lastly, while getting rid of a pilot for routine flight is already in our technological grasp. Unsurprisingly any failures or sudden problem are going to be hard to handle. For instance how would an autonomous air-craft choose a safe landing location if it detects problem that requires landing right away. A busy street would be less than ideal where as a human could easily see less occupied areas. It also would need to make sure that there are not tree branches or power lines are crossing any part of it's chosen landing zone. It would also need to detect that it's not landing on anything like a car or anything else.
https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2004/0816/037.html#f6e57154f3a...
https://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2006/0918/043.html?partne...
”One might imagine that the Federal Aviation Administration is fully in charge of Manhattan’s crowded airspace. But the agency isn’t even aware how many helicopters hover over the city on a daily basis. The FAA doesn’t generally monitor chopper traffic, which operates under Visual Flight Rules (VFR): Unless pilots approach an airport, they’re required to communicate only with other pilots in nearby crafts, and not with air traffic control. This means that depending on where a given pilot is, they may not have to speak with anybody at all.”
Presumably, these would, too (until too many accidents occur)
So that's a strangely-worded statement. Let me unpack it ...
Almost all helicopters are not IFR-equipped or operated under IFR (including EMS), so they must fly under visual meteorological conditions using VFR rules.
And although they can fly without ATC facilities in some airspace, usually they use ATC for takeoff and landings to airports, and arrivals and departures to airports, and for position reports.
So what you meant to say was, "Almost all helicopters fly under VMC conditions using VFR rules, and communicate with ATC except when they are in an airspace where they're not required to.
But they do broadcast Mode-C and ADS-B at all times in airspace that requires it, which goes to ATC: