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This is pretty cool. They built the taxi to do battery operated flights, with the longest flight so far was 150 miles at a top speed of around 200 mph.

For reference, 500 miles is the distance between San Diego and San Francisco. That’s a 90 minute flight that would take closer to 2 1/2 hours with this air taxi. So I suspect that this demonstration is less about any sort of aspiration to replace batteries and fossil fuels with hydrogen, and more a demonstration of an operationally clean burning fuel.

The criticisms that hydrogen is environmentally expensive are valid, but what’s interesting is that the operational use of the vehicle, whether it’s battery or fuel cell, is effectively emissions-free. When the operational fuel is clean, emissions improvements can be centralized. That’s a really big deal.

https://www.jobyaviation.com/news/joby-progresses-next-phase...

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If it's a taxi service, is there a chance that +90 minutes for security and baggage could be avoided to make the door to door time more comparable?

You still need to make sure that no one except the pilot can take over the controls and that nobody is secretly loading up the VTOL with bombs in their luggage with the intention to crash it into the side of a glass skyscraper.

Then there is the safety of the passengers. If you and the pilot are the only ones in the aircraft, there is not much risk to yourself, but if the pilot dies, then the aircraft must land autonomously. If there is a group of passengers, then a terrorist could take the passengers hostage. So you still need to check for weapons and explosives.

The only case where you could get rid of security is with a fully autonomous aircraft that carries no luggage and only a single person.

This is a weird assumption, see my comment above - there already exist a bunch of airplanes operating in the US with no TSA. Also, what’s the point of bombing small airplanes? Why not to bomb a bus instead? The impact would be larger.

Americans have a massive blind spot to anything that happens as a result of driving a vehicle.

40k+ deaths/year and unlike the rest of the developed world, its increasing, and you can barely even start a conversation about better managing the size of the cars that are sold these days.

you're kidding, right? everyone I know both online and IRL complains constantly about how big cars have gotten as a result of the CAFE regulations

It’s not too expensive to buy your own small aircraft

This is already the case with a bunch of small plane airlines. They are also reasonably priced (compared to chartering). I personally love JetSuiteX (JSX) and the experience is truly incredible, with just 5 minutes to board the plane from entering the hangar. No TSA, no BS. There are a few more with similar service, but as far as I know, JSX was the one that found the loophole in the regulations that allowed them to run their operations this way legally. Proliferation of small aircraft cheap to operate will make this model ubiquitous.

Edit: typos

> is there a chance that +90 minutes for security and baggage could be avoided to make the door to door time more comparable?

Blade in New York flies through high-security corridors. Check-in is like a minute. (Counterpoint: I regularly show up to my small-town airport fifteen minutes before boarding is scheduled to start, although that precludes being able to check a bag.)

That said: you can’t easily take out a building with a helicopter. That may not be true with a tankful of 700-bar hydrogen.

I'm betting the hydrogen is actually a lot safer than a tank full of jet A. (not to defend using hydrogen, which in these applications seems to be a meme perpetuated by politicians/oil companies)

Since you are already betting, how much will you bet with me?

Define the bet and how we're going to test it, but I'll stand by my statement. Jet A is probably worse for buildings than high pressure hydrogen in an impact.

Jet A probably is worse for buildings, but compressed hydrogen gas seems a lot worse for the people on the plane and people near the plane when it is on the ground. Methane, ethane or propane also seems worse for the same reason, namely, they need to be at very high pressures for the tank to be small enough to be economical on an airplane.

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