I've followed and thought about this space for long. It might turn out that humans are the last things to fly on autonomous vehicles.
Quadcopter drones are already used routinely for information gathering purposes. We might get autonomous small aircraft that do van sized cargo delivery quite soon. Those and other similar systems then get enough repetition and practicalities sorted out that eventually humans can be transported.
One thing that my child mind never accounted for was what happens if my flying car breaks down? In a normal vehicle, it cruises to a stop and gravity keeps it on the ground. That same principle becomes sheer terror when applied to a flying car model.
This problem is mostly fixed in general aviation, and fix is so successful, planes magnitudes safer than ground vehicles (statistics said, probability of accident on road is about 0.1% but on planes it is 0.0001%).
On first page of google search: probability of accident on road
"for every 1000 miles driven, your chances of getting into a crash are 1 in 366. Insurance companies report that customers file a claim once every 17.9 years"
For planes:
"about .01 deaths per 100,000 departures from 225 accidents between 2013 and 2021"
“The industry 2022 fatality risk of 0.11 means that on average, a person would need to take a flight every day for 25,214 years to experience a 100% fatal accident,” stated the I.A.T.A.
https://www.nbc.com/nbc-insider/how-common-are-commercial-pl...
To achieve reliability mostly used two approaches - more strict regulations on design and production (one cannot sale unsafe plane), and same with maintenance.
Some countries going even farther then others, for example, all Soviet helicopters required to have at least two engines and to make safe landing on only one.
Also, for aviation regulators typical to sacrifice modern hype technologies and be extremely conservative on electronics and software, so planes still achievable but reliable (yes, I don't like npm, I think planes will be hundreds times more dangerous if use npm).
I mean, there are ways to still mitigate most of the risk.
Obviously probably an oversimplification, but I could imagine one or more of the following:
- reliable ejection + personal parachute
- gliding mechanism
- parachute for the vehicle itself
The latter two assume the vehicle is fairly small and/or lightweight.
Of course, similar to airplanes, multiple redundancies would also mitigate risk.
A number of mitigations could help reduce risk below that of driving cars (which can be quite risky in some areas/situations, but we take the risk anyway).
I’m more worried about people on the ground being safe. There’s not a lot of safe places to crash over a dense urban environment. Any plan that involves 10,000x more aircraft flying over cities is inherently flawed.
eVTOL over rivers, lakes, or designated ‘flyways’ could work but such limitations would make flying cars far less useful, unless they can also operate as cars.
Safely and not unacceptably noisily - and the same applies en-route, as well.
There are other scenarios where small, autonomous VTOL aircraft would be very useful, and in such cases, the question of whether such vehicles could reasonably be called flying cars becomes mainly a lexical/usage one.
> If we are unable to make full self drive work for cars
Believe me, air have so much more volume, autopilots for planes are simpler than for cars.
Definitively, air transport is more dangerous physically than land transport, but with stricter regulations on build planes and on maintenance/using them, we now have magnitudes (about 100-1000 times) better safety at air than on land.
Well,
are here? No. They can start to spread in few years? Yes.
Where: NOT for urban mobility despite the claims. Instead they match PERFECTLY the substantial green new deal, or the large sprawl of single family homes and small buildings because no one want flying things in a dense are, take off and landing are nightmarish etc while in a moderately spread area they are the perfect match: you have nature, space to evolve, and anything is still nearby because 60km is just 10' flight.
How? Well, at first I think not eVTOL but some VTOL with various tech, simply because the battery is too heavy to be efficient in such form, we can make eSTOL that for not-so-short range flight are nearly efficient as cars, but they can be used in a mid-dense scenario, so they are possible and practically useless.
A small note: https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/uam-full-... EU/McKinsey focused NOT on the possibility of flying stuff but on public acceptance of them. Take a serious note on that. Some small planes are already as efficient as car for many kind of flights and they do not demand the road infra from any point A and B of a flight, of course there are various constraints, but roads have others constraints as well. The reality is that we have roads because we can naturally work, ride animals who walk etc, modern era means also modern means.
America will go to any length to avoid undoing an export far more damaging than any of its nuclear bombs: its 1960s city planning
Even if it means crippling its own economy and the economies of its allies
Think of the trillions of dollars lost per year globally because some seppo modernist urban planners were arrogant enough to think they’d uncovered the ultimate solution to designing cities regardless of the nuances or context
Want to begin repairing Pax Americana? Get private interests out of your public infrastructure operations. Be a role model for other countries within the American Empire to emulate
New York actually had Air Taxis (passenger van helicopters) that shuttled people around the city until 1979 when a horrible crash ended the company forever.
In the sense that the current driving population will pilot around a "flying car", no, that will never happen. A. aviation is expensive so the general populace will never afford it and B. imagine the idiots in cars now except in the air.
Forget flying cars -- a 50's consumerist fantasy. I'm begging for basics like safe bike lanes, fast public transit and cheap high speed rail.
> It’s often remarked upon, in boosterish circles, that American society allows about forty thousand road fatalities a year but refuses to tolerate even one aviation death.
You can demand perfection in planes. That will likely raise their price and operating costs. in which case more people will drive causing more, not less deaths.
That isn't to say we shouldn't always try to make them safer. But if you put every passenger in a pod like the president in "Escape from New York" you'll make planes safer and still cause more death
I want flying emergency services, but that's purely driven by how the random sirens at all hours of the day and night mean that can't concentrate or get good sleep in my current apartment on the corner of a major junction of a busy road with regular long queues.
(It was fine when I moved in… all the roads were empty due to the pandemic).
I really, really want flying cars tho. However, lame rebranding of helicopters and planes doesn't qualify. Until we got some scifi antigravity levitation stuff, let's do the solar punk aesthetics and not waste energy punching air.
Flying cars rely on technical innovation to happen. The other things you mentioned are possible now but rely on social support and political change to happen. I bet we see flying cars before any of those things (in the usa at least).
Bikes: a desperate demand for society to subsidize the hobby of high-status individuals.
Why should we allocate scarce infrastructure land for marginal increases in bike-lanes (that are chronically under-used), for perhaps uniquely the worst form of transit?
If someone told you that they wanted you to provision funding/space for a new form of transit that was:
* Slow/short range
* Impractical in all but basically nice weather
* Requires parking
* Not family-friendly
* Not friendly for the elderly or anyone who is disabled to almost any definition of "disabled"
* Unsafe
* Has low to no cargo capacity
You'd call them crazy. But somehow we've got the meme that bikes are good.
These flying cars are essentially just snazzy helicopters for wealthy people and enthusiasts. They can 'never' scale to be a mass-market, rush-hour queuing solution and holiday mass-exodus.
Well 'never' is a long time, but at least quite a long way away before the AI, technology and materials can support a lot of traffic, mid-air fender benders, breakdowns etc.
A helicopter can't go from flying to transport you in a highway. When people talk about flying cars they imagine that. Something that can fly and go around roads as a _car_ would normally do.
[+] [-] JudasGoat|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] neonate|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] sethammons|1 year ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moller_M400_Skycar
Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shlZySkGq6g
[+] [-] obloid|1 year ago|reply
https://img.tecnomagazine.net/2017/07/Moller-Skycar-popular-...
[+] [-] Gravityloss|1 year ago|reply
Quadcopter drones are already used routinely for information gathering purposes. We might get autonomous small aircraft that do van sized cargo delivery quite soon. Those and other similar systems then get enough repetition and practicalities sorted out that eventually humans can be transported.
[+] [-] lagniappe|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] simne|1 year ago|reply
On first page of google search: probability of accident on road "for every 1000 miles driven, your chances of getting into a crash are 1 in 366. Insurance companies report that customers file a claim once every 17.9 years"
"Approximately 1.19 million people die each year as a result of road traffic crashes." "Between 20 and 50 million more people suffer non-fatal injuries, with many incurring a disability" https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/road-traffi...
For planes: "about .01 deaths per 100,000 departures from 225 accidents between 2013 and 2021" “The industry 2022 fatality risk of 0.11 means that on average, a person would need to take a flight every day for 25,214 years to experience a 100% fatal accident,” stated the I.A.T.A. https://www.nbc.com/nbc-insider/how-common-are-commercial-pl...
To achieve reliability mostly used two approaches - more strict regulations on design and production (one cannot sale unsafe plane), and same with maintenance.
Some countries going even farther then others, for example, all Soviet helicopters required to have at least two engines and to make safe landing on only one.
Also, for aviation regulators typical to sacrifice modern hype technologies and be extremely conservative on electronics and software, so planes still achievable but reliable (yes, I don't like npm, I think planes will be hundreds times more dangerous if use npm).
[+] [-] bluGill|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] BurningFrog|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jader201|1 year ago|reply
Obviously probably an oversimplification, but I could imagine one or more of the following:
- reliable ejection + personal parachute
- gliding mechanism
- parachute for the vehicle itself
The latter two assume the vehicle is fairly small and/or lightweight.
Of course, similar to airplanes, multiple redundancies would also mitigate risk.
A number of mitigations could help reduce risk below that of driving cars (which can be quite risky in some areas/situations, but we take the risk anyway).
[+] [-] woleium|1 year ago|reply
The dream of flying cars is to reduce City traffic, and until we can take off and land safely in a city there is no point.
[+] [-] Retric|1 year ago|reply
eVTOL over rivers, lakes, or designated ‘flyways’ could work but such limitations would make flying cars far less useful, unless they can also operate as cars.
[+] [-] ta1243|1 year ago|reply
You know what does reduce city traffic? People travelling by foot, subways and bikes.
[+] [-] mannykannot|1 year ago|reply
There are other scenarios where small, autonomous VTOL aircraft would be very useful, and in such cases, the question of whether such vehicles could reasonably be called flying cars becomes mainly a lexical/usage one.
[+] [-] simne|1 year ago|reply
Believe me, air have so much more volume, autopilots for planes are simpler than for cars.
Definitively, air transport is more dangerous physically than land transport, but with stricter regulations on build planes and on maintenance/using them, we now have magnitudes (about 100-1000 times) better safety at air than on land.
[+] [-] pcthrowaway|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] kkfx|1 year ago|reply
Where: NOT for urban mobility despite the claims. Instead they match PERFECTLY the substantial green new deal, or the large sprawl of single family homes and small buildings because no one want flying things in a dense are, take off and landing are nightmarish etc while in a moderately spread area they are the perfect match: you have nature, space to evolve, and anything is still nearby because 60km is just 10' flight.
How? Well, at first I think not eVTOL but some VTOL with various tech, simply because the battery is too heavy to be efficient in such form, we can make eSTOL that for not-so-short range flight are nearly efficient as cars, but they can be used in a mid-dense scenario, so they are possible and practically useless.
A small note: https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/uam-full-... EU/McKinsey focused NOT on the possibility of flying stuff but on public acceptance of them. Take a serious note on that. Some small planes are already as efficient as car for many kind of flights and they do not demand the road infra from any point A and B of a flight, of course there are various constraints, but roads have others constraints as well. The reality is that we have roads because we can naturally work, ride animals who walk etc, modern era means also modern means.
[+] [-] neom|1 year ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKGK_8gmNQ4
[+] [-] lmpdev|1 year ago|reply
Even if it means crippling its own economy and the economies of its allies
Think of the trillions of dollars lost per year globally because some seppo modernist urban planners were arrogant enough to think they’d uncovered the ultimate solution to designing cities regardless of the nuances or context
Want to begin repairing Pax Americana? Get private interests out of your public infrastructure operations. Be a role model for other countries within the American Empire to emulate
[+] [-] seanoliver|1 year ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Airways
[+] [-] TeeWEE|1 year ago|reply
https://innovationorigins.com/en/dutch-flying-car-soars-with...
[+] [-] throw7|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] James87211|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Fripplebubby|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ta1243|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] khrbrt|1 year ago|reply
> It’s often remarked upon, in boosterish circles, that American society allows about forty thousand road fatalities a year but refuses to tolerate even one aviation death.
We shouldn't tolerate that either!
[+] [-] baxtr|1 year ago|reply
But, people don’t care so much about a “small” car or even a “small” plane crash. Even if they add up to an insane number as high as 40k per year!
[+] [-] iancmceachern|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] nox101|1 year ago|reply
That isn't to say we shouldn't always try to make them safer. But if you put every passenger in a pod like the president in "Escape from New York" you'll make planes safer and still cause more death
[+] [-] ben_w|1 year ago|reply
(It was fine when I moved in… all the roads were empty due to the pandemic).
[+] [-] jijijijij|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] AlwaysRock|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] aidenn0|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] settsu|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] napierzaza|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] aetherson|1 year ago|reply
Why should we allocate scarce infrastructure land for marginal increases in bike-lanes (that are chronically under-used), for perhaps uniquely the worst form of transit?
If someone told you that they wanted you to provision funding/space for a new form of transit that was:
* Slow/short range
* Impractical in all but basically nice weather
* Requires parking
* Not family-friendly
* Not friendly for the elderly or anyone who is disabled to almost any definition of "disabled"
* Unsafe
* Has low to no cargo capacity
You'd call them crazy. But somehow we've got the meme that bikes are good.
[+] [-] jonnycomputer|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] kristofferc|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] flurdy|1 year ago|reply
Well 'never' is a long time, but at least quite a long way away before the AI, technology and materials can support a lot of traffic, mid-air fender benders, breakdowns etc.
[+] [-] luzojeda|1 year ago|reply