There is a business use case here in NYC. NYC to the Hamptons or out east long Island. The locals in the Hamptons are complaining about noise pollution from helicopters making trips to the Hamptons from NYC. If this makes little or no noise the current helicopter service companies will use them and people will pay $800 ( off-peak) - $2,500 ( peak) one way trip from the west side of manhattan / Chelsea area to east Hampton / Montauk . If you got the money that is :-)
I would have to look up the details, but there are EASA certification standards covering noise level measurement. Looking at the pictures, I think they achieve low noise levels by having e-motors and mid sized props (multiple). That avoids engine noise, reduces individual prop noise and having something between rotors and turbines should be quieter than a conventional helicopter on the one side and something like jet on the other hand.
They are really surprisingly not loud. Not silent either, but not annoyingly, or disturbingly loud. Not comparable to the much, much older Bell UH-1 which we called 'Teppichklopfer' (carpet banger?). So it seems they know something about making helos less noisy.
I say this from the experience of having seen them come down maybe 200 times in the last 15 years? Sometimes just practicing it seems, with inner city, suburban, or park and field background noise floor.
As much as I want to live in a world with the Jetsons, what's the business case here? Presumably it's going to have to launch vertically from the top of buildings, which means that you can go from skyscraper landing pad to skyscraper landing pad. How many taxi users are trying to travel within a financial district? I imagine much more commonly they're trying to go from high-density to low-density (like FiDi to West Village) which this operating model could only support if you build a serious amount of elevated architecture.
Not to mention having to pay for insurance premiums of a miniaturized airplane that is zipping around a heavily inhabited urban area.
There are probably enough people of financial means who are willing to pay for expensive and much faster taxi service, especially if they can go to the roof of the building they're currently in to depart.
There are lots of reasons why this won't work, but it could work... and it could be quite useful in the right scenario.
Lots of useful long distance flights leave early in the morning, meaning to get to the airport for those flights you have to leave VERY early. But with an air taxi like this, it might allow you to save a couple of hours and a lot of headache.
It's not really mass-marketable though, and I doubt we could expect to see a constant stream of little air taxis buzzing around.
There was a regular helicopter service on top of skyscrapers, like a bus. There isn't anymore, because things that go up, must come down.
"Urban" and "flying" will never happen.
I'm regularly astonished that we trust people with shopping carts, given how well they use them. Nobody is going to trust any density flying over our heads. Not even with auto pilot. Sorry Fifth Element fans.
The best case I've heard is helping to reduce traffic to places that expect a large influx of folks at the same time.
Concerts, for example - if you have a lot of these flying taxis, you can have people park in auxiliary lots that are 20 minutes away by car, then get shuttled over via air taxi. Depending on how many taxis and how fast the turnaround is, you could eliminate a non-negligible amount of traffic into/out of parking lots. Same with sporting events, etc.
And then on a similar note, airports - I believe something like this was proposed for LAX. In the same way that people park at off-site parking lots and take shuttle buses, they could park off-site and take air taxis.
These scenarios work relatively well because they put the air taxis in nonstop use for some period of time, and they have the space/infrastructure to set up spaces for them to land and load/unload folks.
You’ve hit the nail on the head. You need a big clearance for landing and take off, with dedicated space and easy ways for people to get to it. This is crazy expensive real estate, doesn’t scale usually beyond 1 target (unlike a parking structure), is scarce, and is ultimately the biggest constraint here that cannot be overcome by technology.
The VTOL concept for air taxis is silly; this is just a 3d rendering for a press release, and battery energy density just isn't there yet for them to be useful.
But electric flight is without a doubt going to revolutionize commuter airlines. With an electric powertrain, you get rid of the vast majority of costs associated with flying which are the intensive maintenance and overhaul schedules required for turboprop/turbofan engines. You can then economically fly small traditional aircraft with electric powertrains carrying ~10 passengers up to 250 miles at 200mph with current battery tech, and takeoff/land from tiny municipal airports with no need for TSA. At that point flying becomes like hopping on a bus, and just as cheap. Living within 250 miles of a metro area and commuting every day will be a nonissue. Something like the Eviation Alice [0] is far more likely to be the future than any of these VTOL concepts.
In related news, Brazilian GOL Airlines just pre-ordered 250 eVTOL from Vertical Aerospaces for a 2025 delivery. So I think the market is heated-up right now.
Brazil, and specially São Paulo, is a huge market for helicopters and air-taxi services in general, not to speak of regional air services, for which the VA-X4 aircraft is somewhat constrained with a mere 160km range.
> Those modern transportation 'solutions' are a sign of local maxima of current city design. A bad design that cannot scale any further.
Exactly. And for some reason the "solutions" always have the nice feature that they get those using them out of the sight of the rest of the lowly peasants living in those cities.
As if it hasn't been demonstrated how public transport can do wonders for highly populated if done right (e.g. look at japan).
I see comments like this quite often without any suggestions for how it would happen practically. Let's talk Los Angeles, for example - where would you put light rail lines to sufficiently cover the low-density 400+ square miles of city sufficiently well to be better than cars? How would you acquire the requisite property & rights of way to run the lines? How would you fight the guaranteed NIMBY protests from local voters? Where would you get the tens of billions of dollars it would take?
"Fixing" a city is hard. And I haven't seen too many examples of it actually done, in comparison to cities that were built with public transit in mind from the beginning.
If you live anywhere where people love Harleys and Dodge Ram trucks with aftermarket exhausts, then 65 is luxury levels of quietness.
Also, whether in my small village or in a fancy suburb, there seems to always be someone with a 2 cycle, muffler-free piece of lawn equipment running. Leaf blowers are the worst, but weed trimmers and now even leaf vaccuums are common.
Or, if you live in an urban area, especially in NYC, there's rarely a moment that you don't hear an emergency vehicle siren echoing throughout the neighborhood.
Unfortunately, it's just a noisy world. At least this aircraft is electric and has some goal of keeping noise as low as possible.
They don't say how/where they measured, so the figures are basically worthless. 65-70 dB(A) seems on the low end of consumer unmanned quadcopters[1], e.g. "Maximum sound pressure level for fast flyover at 15 m height: 62 dB(A)" for a DJI Phantom 2 weighing less than 2kg.
If they managed to get into that range for a vehicle that must weigh many hundreds of times more, I guess that'd be very impressive.
If memory serves well, Airbus' programms, they have two competing ones, are quite old (around 2018 or so when it officially started, so the idea is most likely older).
The same lies that are peddled to us about pretty much everything. The emissions are just moved downstream, and could even be worse in certain places, as compared to other transportation systems. I am curious to see how they fare in energy usage as compared to an electric car, electric bikes and electric trains.
Lie may be a bit strong. True zero emissions from resource extraction to delivery is nigh impossible, but there's still sizable benefit to be had from electrification.
Most notably, even if the craft is charged with electricity generated by a coal-fired plant, overall efficiency is still improved simply because power plants are much more efficient than any kind of internal combustion engine. And of course, the vehicle will only become more clean as fossil fuel plants are phased out, where fossil fuel vehicles will only ever be fossil fueled, barring the unusual electric conversion.
That said, the ideal solution is electric mass transit like the train systems seen frequently in east Asia. Unfortunately, those are unlikely to appear in North American cities any time soon due to the thick jungle created by corrupt local politicians, NIBMYs determined to freeze-frame their neighborhoods at any cost, and price gouging underperforming construction contractors.
[+] [-] adamqureshi|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neom|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] coldcode|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jjj123|4 years ago|reply
I wonder how they’re getting those numbers. Like at what distance are they measuring from?
I find it hard to believe they’re able to make a flying vehicle quieter than a drone 1/100th of its size.
Edited for clarity
[1]: https://www.airbornedrones.co/drone-noise-levels/
[+] [-] hef19898|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LargoLasskhyfv|4 years ago|reply
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurocopter_EC135
They are really surprisingly not loud. Not silent either, but not annoyingly, or disturbingly loud. Not comparable to the much, much older Bell UH-1 which we called 'Teppichklopfer' (carpet banger?). So it seems they know something about making helos less noisy.
I say this from the experience of having seen them come down maybe 200 times in the last 15 years? Sometimes just practicing it seems, with inner city, suburban, or park and field background noise floor.
[+] [-] icyfox|4 years ago|reply
Not to mention having to pay for insurance premiums of a miniaturized airplane that is zipping around a heavily inhabited urban area.
[+] [-] blunte|4 years ago|reply
There are lots of reasons why this won't work, but it could work... and it could be quite useful in the right scenario.
Lots of useful long distance flights leave early in the morning, meaning to get to the airport for those flights you have to leave VERY early. But with an air taxi like this, it might allow you to save a couple of hours and a lot of headache.
It's not really mass-marketable though, and I doubt we could expect to see a constant stream of little air taxis buzzing around.
[+] [-] hedberg10|4 years ago|reply
"Urban" and "flying" will never happen.
I'm regularly astonished that we trust people with shopping carts, given how well they use them. Nobody is going to trust any density flying over our heads. Not even with auto pilot. Sorry Fifth Element fans.
[+] [-] awillen|4 years ago|reply
Concerts, for example - if you have a lot of these flying taxis, you can have people park in auxiliary lots that are 20 minutes away by car, then get shuttled over via air taxi. Depending on how many taxis and how fast the turnaround is, you could eliminate a non-negligible amount of traffic into/out of parking lots. Same with sporting events, etc.
And then on a similar note, airports - I believe something like this was proposed for LAX. In the same way that people park at off-site parking lots and take shuttle buses, they could park off-site and take air taxis.
These scenarios work relatively well because they put the air taxis in nonstop use for some period of time, and they have the space/infrastructure to set up spaces for them to land and load/unload folks.
[+] [-] azinman2|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rsynnott|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] namlem|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ramesh31|4 years ago|reply
But electric flight is without a doubt going to revolutionize commuter airlines. With an electric powertrain, you get rid of the vast majority of costs associated with flying which are the intensive maintenance and overhaul schedules required for turboprop/turbofan engines. You can then economically fly small traditional aircraft with electric powertrains carrying ~10 passengers up to 250 miles at 200mph with current battery tech, and takeoff/land from tiny municipal airports with no need for TSA. At that point flying becomes like hopping on a bus, and just as cheap. Living within 250 miles of a metro area and commuting every day will be a nonissue. Something like the Eviation Alice [0] is far more likely to be the future than any of these VTOL concepts.
[0] https://www.eviation.co/
[+] [-] hef19898|4 years ago|reply
https://www.airbus.com/innovation/zero-emission/urban-air-mo...
[+] [-] me_me_me|4 years ago|reply
The weight of the tanks never drops, so you are flying always full tank plane, the energy density of batteries is much lower -> heavier tanks
And you'd better hope there is no battery fire. Those are vicious.
[+] [-] ojosilva|4 years ago|reply
https://worldairlinenews.com/2021/09/21/gol-to-launch-a-netw...
Brazil, and specially São Paulo, is a huge market for helicopters and air-taxi services in general, not to speak of regional air services, for which the VA-X4 aircraft is somewhat constrained with a mere 160km range.
[+] [-] twobitshifter|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] me_me_me|4 years ago|reply
Those modern transportation 'solutions' are a sign of local maxima of current city design. A bad design that cannot scale any further.
So maybe instead we start on fixing cities?
[+] [-] atoav|4 years ago|reply
Exactly. And for some reason the "solutions" always have the nice feature that they get those using them out of the sight of the rest of the lowly peasants living in those cities.
As if it hasn't been demonstrated how public transport can do wonders for highly populated if done right (e.g. look at japan).
[+] [-] mdorazio|4 years ago|reply
"Fixing" a city is hard. And I haven't seen too many examples of it actually done, in comparison to cities that were built with public transit in mind from the beginning.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mzs|4 years ago|reply
So like a vacuum cleaner, yikes!
[+] [-] blunte|4 years ago|reply
Also, whether in my small village or in a fancy suburb, there seems to always be someone with a 2 cycle, muffler-free piece of lawn equipment running. Leaf blowers are the worst, but weed trimmers and now even leaf vaccuums are common.
Or, if you live in an urban area, especially in NYC, there's rarely a moment that you don't hear an emergency vehicle siren echoing throughout the neighborhood.
Unfortunately, it's just a noisy world. At least this aircraft is electric and has some goal of keeping noise as low as possible.
[+] [-] morsch|4 years ago|reply
If they managed to get into that range for a vehicle that must weigh many hundreds of times more, I guess that'd be very impressive.
[1] https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/11/5940
[+] [-] cyberge99|4 years ago|reply
Lawnmowers are significantly louder.
[+] [-] burkaman|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KuiN|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] julbook|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pupdogg|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] newshorts|4 years ago|reply
Additionally, one has to consider the flight path would ideally be more straight, allowing for less overall mileage per trip than a land vehicle.
[+] [-] rsynnott|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] liminal|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ivanvanderbyl|4 years ago|reply
https://www.archer.com/maker
[+] [-] hef19898|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darth_avocado|4 years ago|reply
The same lies that are peddled to us about pretty much everything. The emissions are just moved downstream, and could even be worse in certain places, as compared to other transportation systems. I am curious to see how they fare in energy usage as compared to an electric car, electric bikes and electric trains.
[+] [-] kitsunesoba|4 years ago|reply
Most notably, even if the craft is charged with electricity generated by a coal-fired plant, overall efficiency is still improved simply because power plants are much more efficient than any kind of internal combustion engine. And of course, the vehicle will only become more clean as fossil fuel plants are phased out, where fossil fuel vehicles will only ever be fossil fueled, barring the unusual electric conversion.
That said, the ideal solution is electric mass transit like the train systems seen frequently in east Asia. Unfortunately, those are unlikely to appear in North American cities any time soon due to the thick jungle created by corrupt local politicians, NIBMYs determined to freeze-frame their neighborhoods at any cost, and price gouging underperforming construction contractors.