Terrafugia CEO Responds To "Flying Car" Criticism 233
waderoush writes "The majority of the comments on last week's Slashdot post It's Not a Flying Car — It's A Drivable Airplane were critical, even dismissive, of Terrafugia's work to build a two-passenger airplane with folding wings that's also certified for highway driving. We boiled down these criticisms to the dozen most commonly expressed points, and today we've published responses from Terrafugia CEO Carl Dietrich. While hybrid airplane-automobiles are an old (some would say laughable) idea, Dietrich argues that current materials and avionics technologies finally make the concept feasible."
Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
1. A "drivable airplane" makes sense. In the way that you do not have to pay for hangar space and keep it safe and cozy at home. You just store it at home. You just "drive" the vehicle to the airport, put it together, do your pre-check inspection, fly, do your post-check inspection, fold, drive to destination. It's not the "Jetson's" concept, you have to be a licensed pilot, but it's, in a sense, practical enough for use.
2. Terrfugia's CEO state that the materials are not available to make it practical. I certainly hope so. Folding, flying, driving it's going to put a lot of stress to a lot of parts on the vehicle. Flying or driving is bad enough to cause problems to components, combining both in one vehicle it's going to make matters worst. I sincerely wish them luck.
Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich (Score:3, Insightful)
We (the masses) can benefit from the wastefulness of the rich and the advances in technology their decadent lifestyle demands.
(Cars were for the rich initially. As were TVs. As were computers. As were LCD watches. etc., etc.)
whatever, good questions (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich (Score:3, Insightful)
Did you do some aerospace engineering?
Composite design?
Impact resistant deformable bumpers that are aerodynamic?
I can imagine you grunting that same thing to the guy inventing the wheel, instead of sharpening a pointed stick like you think he should be doing.
But will it work? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm looking forward to the performance of the flying prototype. I wish them good luck on making it and flying it to Oshkosh this year. If they make it to Oshkosh even without meeting all of their planned specs I expect them to make money for years since this really does fit a niche that no other vehicle does. While they'll have plenty of revenue, hopefully they'll be profitable too.
solves the hangar space problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich (Score:5, Insightful)
I welcome the rich pensioners that bought Mercedes cars with airbags in the 80's, so that development by Mercedes could be financed and now you get life-saving airbag in even the smallest cars.
I welcome the yuppies that bought the first aluminum bikes, costing probably several thousand dollars back then, but now anyone can have a bike that is light and doesn't rust.
I welcome the showoffs that wanted a mobile phone in the early 90s, so now wireless technology is cheap enough to be used in third world countries, and get people connected.
Should I go on? Advances, especially in materials, are often sustainable because of some marginal hobbies of rich people. They want the lightest and strongest, even when it is actually not needed for their cause (do fishing rods really need to be made out of carbon-fiber?). But the amount of money that they want to invest can keep small innovative companies alive. In the end, we all win.
Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich (Score:5, Insightful)
From http://www.audiouk.com/vintage/telephone.htm [audiouk.com]
From http://www.evancarmichael.com/Famous-Entrepreneurs/559/Lesson-1-Stick-With-It.html [evancarmichael.com]
Next clueless AC response?
Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but you're confusing what you want with the actual state of affairs. Why you want it to be that way is a little mysterious, but your ability to confuse it with reality suggests just the sort of disconnect that might drive you to want to see a failed economy, the better to justify your world view.
I'll have to check, but I assume you make the same exact complaint when Slashdot talks about new video boards, hair-splitting differences between Linux distros, the space program, squabbles over pirated movies and music, 4D rubik's cubes, what China does with web filtering, sailing robots, and whether or not Google is obscuring people's faces in Street View? Nah, I won't check, because I'm sure you did.
Unimaginable? I beg to differ, but where'd it go? (Score:4, Insightful)
In fact, the section is still there. So is the link. Welcome to BackSlash: http://backslash.slashdot.org/ [slashdot.org]
But where the heck did it go? Did the 'editors' realize that "whew boy, this sure is hard work!"? I never found any information on why it seems to have suddenly just stopped dead.
Maybe I missed a comment from an 'editor' somewhere in an unrelated thread, perhaps it's under some catch-all in the FAQ (it's not listed as a section in the "What are the sections for?" item).
What I do know is: I miss it.
Now to see if I'll get a +5 Off-topic..
When is a car not a car.... (Score:3, Insightful)
No one thought there was a problem building a living room car that every one can afford. Many people still do not. To many people, the living room car is a reasonable and necessary item. Many even invest in tricking out their living room car with full entertainment centers. The benefits are clear. So much time is spent in a car, wouldn't it be great to have all the comforts of a living room. A beer, a tv, a phone. Room to spread out, get conformable, even made engage in intimate relations. And there is little to show that this is a bad thing. The drive is more conformable. Oil prices are up, which is good thing unless one is stupid enough to live in an oil poor region. General safety is up, unless one is stupid enough to drive a car that is not a living room.
Reading through the summary and responses there seems to be this same air of uncertainty that existed when the auto manufacturers were using a loophole in a law so that farmers could continue to farm to provide cheap inefficient cars to the masses. There is nothing particularly wrong with it. There is no reason why a person who can afford it should not have a aircar, or a land yacht, or anything else they think they need to be happy. However, such things do have long term effect on the human condition. Speaking personally, there are already severe safety issues on my street dealing with land yachts that they streets are too narrow to accommodate, especially at the speeds that these drivers like to travel. I can imagine somebody buying one of these, and trying to land. At the very least, i would expect a lawsuit demanding that we cut down the trees and pave the front yards to accommodate such planes. And don't laugh. Similar lawsuits have been filed as people wish to reclaim overgrown land for their big houses and big cars.
Re:frost piss (Score:5, Insightful)
Two words. Gas mileage. Show me any verticle fan craft, carrying 4 adults, that gets anywhere near the gas mileage of any normal car on the road.
Using engine power to hold the craft up is the antithesis of obtaining reasonable mileage.
Now add a gyroscope to that and a second safety thing and a third, so it's impossible to get it upside-down
Hand-waving those hard parts away doesn't make it any easier.
For any type of non-airport ops, we need 6" precision in a heavy crosswind. Why 6"? That's what you do in your car in a parking lot. Not getting upside down is only part of the problem. You have to come down sometime.
Maintenance. A LOT of cars on the road are spectacularly badly maintained. Do you want those same clowns flying overhead, ready to break down?
landing places (Score:2, Insightful)
Thanks for the response (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this project has a lot of potential. I'm always surprised at the attitude people have that "well, I wouldn't buy it, therefore it's not a good product." News flash, folks: there are market segments you are not a part of. Just because not everyone would buy something doesn't mean no one will. Judging from the number of preorders this has gotten (and knowing many general aviation pilots who would leap at an opportunity to own something like this), I would say it has been very well received.
And he's right about the timing. While carbon fiber technology has existed for a long time now, it is just now gaining traction in general-purpose manufacturing, and the economies of scale are bringing the price down to the point where products can be built with it for roughly the same cost as some other materials. The convergence of affordable composite manufacturing and a new type of sport-plane license have finally made this type of vehicle possible.
The licensing programs for general aviation are much more strict than they are for automobiles. If this vehicle inspires regular car drivers to get their VFR licenses, I suspect the training will also make them better drivers.
However, I don't envy the cost of Terrafugia's product certification program. This vehicle needs to be certified to both FAA and NHTSA standards, which aircraft and automobile companies spend many millions on separately, just for the paperwork alone. Godspeed to the certification team!
Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich (Score:5, Insightful)
Energy is incredibly dirt cheap to the rich. They dont want hybrids, they want a sexy exclusive car with 1000hp. (Bugatti Veryon) They want a comfortable estate with expanses of elegant green grass that takes a ton of water to keep green. and they burn more electricity in their home than what 10 homes use.
Energy or transportation efficiency does not come from the toys of the rich. These innovations come from scientists, entrepreneurs, and yes some of the rich that want to give back to society by financing grand and foreward ideas. Like the New york subway, Space Ship 1, etc....
Done even think that the rich are playing with high efficiency items and they will trickle down. They dont. They play with their exclusive devices and then sometimes finance efficient things.
Re:Well... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not entirely sure I agree (and yes, I am a pilot). In town, the drag of a car isn't a real big issue; at speeds of less than 30MPH, wind resistance is pretty minimal. At highway speeds of ~60MPH you've quadrupled the drag, and at typical general aviation aircraft speeds of 120MPH, you have 16 times more drag for a given shape and area than at commuter speeds. Consequently, a six foot wide car in town doesn't matter; at flight speeds, the drag of a six foot wide vehicle is pretty significant. That's why the Cessna 152 (a small trainer) is only something like 39 inches wide -- the narrower the fuselage, the less drag. A Cessna 172, a step up from the 152, is only about three inches wider than a 152, and most light single engine airplanes don't get *much* wider than that (I don't recall off-hand how wide a Cessna 206 or 207 -- the biggest single-engine piston airplanes Cessna makes -- are).
What does this have to do with how much sense a drivable airplane makes? Well, the drawings of Terrafugia's design show a vehicle with a cross-section much like a car. It's rather wide, presumably for road stability and passenger comfort. Unfortunately, this makes a poor aircraft design because of the much greater speeds at which even a light sport airplane flies. Terrafugia is claiming some pretty impressive fuel economy numbers for their car, but I'm skeptical. I own a two-place tandem airplane (http://www.gecko-ak.org/N600LW/ [gecko-ak.org]); it's about as skinny as an airplane can get, meaning its flat-plate area is pretty minimal, and therefore it's drag should be pretty minimal as well. I burn about 4.5 gallons per hour at 60 MPH. That works out to 13 miles per gallon -- better than my Nissan Frontier, but not by much. I sincerely doubt Terrafugia will get 26-27 mpg, as they claim, in a wider vehicle, at twice the speed of my airplane.
Walk around inspections (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:frost piss (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years (Score:0, Insightful)
1: There is absolutely -ZERO- events causing the gas and oil spikes, which means there is no end to their price climb in sight. Picture what will happen to prices of fuel when some yahoo lights a fart anywhere near an oil refinery. $6-$8 a gallon of regular unleaded is almost a certain thing in most of the US by the end of the year.
2: Congress is absolutely powerless to do anything to stop it, the current administration just plain doesn't care about the American people in any way. Even if Congress try to do something, how can they pay for it? Sell war bonds to China? The US is bankrupt.
3: The dollar is rapidly losing ground against every single currency in the world. The only reason that the dollar buys what it does is because people believe in it... and people are not anymore.
4: There are no solutions to the energy crisis. Nuclear plants are not going to be built anytime soon, nuclear fusion is a joke to keep tokamaks funded, even though there have been -zero- advances in fusion since the laser was invented. Solar is a joke because it costs more to make a solar panel than what energy it ever gets through its useful life. Wind, geothermal, are only useful in rare areas. Pretty much, the US lives and dies on coal and oil... and cars don't burn coal.
5: The mortgage crisis is just the tip of the iceberg. Its only going to be a matter of time before banks start having to be bailed left and right, just like in the 1980s... and unlike the 1980s, there isn't money to fund the FDIC.
6: The present attitude is "Yo, Joe Sixpack... sell your SUV and buy a Prius"... yep, demanding other people conserve, even through most people would be happy to trade cars, just they don't have the cash to. Conservation is a nice feel good thing, but its not an energy policy. Again, like #4, there is -zero- interest by the government in energy, or breakthroughs in alternative energy sources that will provide more than piecemeal help.
The US is just like the USSR was in 1990. Its bankrupt, but the economic collapse hasn't propagated yet, just like (and to use a bad car example), pulling the alternator with the battery in the circuit doesn't mean the vehicle dies immediately, although it will just be a matter of time until the battery dies. What will be the turning point is when the stock market takes a serious dive, and the Dow heads under 7000.
Prove me wrong on this.
Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years (Score:3, Insightful)
I believe that as oil is a global commodity, if item #3 is true, that would be a cause of item #1 for folks living in the U.S.
Re:frost piss (Score:2, Insightful)
Well I'm here how do you propose to develop an aircraft that can't descend to fast or doesn't flip over in midair? Because if you have a solution I'm sure just about every aircraft manufacturer in the world would be prepared to offer you anything you want for it.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
1) A Cessna 152 (a 30+ year old plane) burns ~6 GPH at 111 knots (Vno), which is about double the fuel mileage of your plane and is quite in line with Terrafugia's numbers. It would seem that your plane just gets poor mileage.
2) Yes, air resistance is exponential, it's relative to the square of the speed - your math is correct. But drag at 30 mph is VERY low, so just saying "16 times that" doesn't mean much. Secondly, to get actual drag you also need to consider drag coefficient and frontal surface area. Frontal surface area is two dimensions - you seem only focused on narrowness. The plane in the article is wide - but it's also a lower profile than "normal" planes. We'd have to have more specific dimensions to know if the overall frontal surface area is more or less than an equivalent plane. Third, as I mentioned above the drag coefficient comes into play. Aerodynamics have come a long way since Cessna's were designed and since your Falcon was designed (20+ years). If you can sufficiently reduce the coefficient, you can increase surface area and end up with the same amount of drag or even less.
Re:frost piss (Score:5, Insightful)
They're not practical for commercial airliners due to square/cube problems however economies of scale make other enhancements more practical in that regime.
And.. Oh, Terrafugia's design does call for one. Big surprise there. IOW, unless your regularly inspected and certified safety system fails, you're not going to die from poor maintenance in other areas, although if it's anything like skydiving, you might just lose your license for a period if negligence is the reason for parachute deployment.
Re:Well... (Score:1, Insightful)
As far as airplanes go, your machine gets really bad fuel economy for its size. In fact its about on par with the 180HP Piper Archer I fly, which burns 9-10 GPH at 120KIAS and can seat 4 people.
Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years (Score:5, Insightful)
most people would be happy to trade cars, just they don't have the cash to
Heh, right. Lots of $1000 cars will get 35MPG, your ego just refuses to be seen in them -- you want the trendy status symbol Prius. The same way you refuse to live within 100 miles of where you work, and then complain about gas prices, as though they're the problem.
I'd love to see $8/gallon gas. I spend about $20/month on gas, even on my small income doubling that is a non-issue.
Cars themselves are luxury items, of course, and you're perfectly capable of living in a city and using public transit like most of the world.
Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years (Score:5, Insightful)
first off, there are plenty of solutions to the "energy crisis". What type of make believe fiticious crap world are we living in where if economics force us to change it's the End Of The World.
1. Solution #1 - switch to an alternate form of energy. There are a ton of options. The last time I checked the sun was still shining and we can still get power from it. Be it solar, wind, or nuclear, there are a ton of options. Why don't we do this? Because the economics don't say we should. Oil is still cheap, but The *second* oil becomes too expensive, there will be a ton of alternate energy sources available to tap. The only reason we don't do it is becuase oil is STILL too cheap.
2. We can also *gasp* change the way we live. Shit, I know i waste plenty of energy. Heating air conditioning... hot water in the mornings, driving to work, pure wastage. How can I get away with wasting energy? Simple, it's cheap. it's less than 5% of my total income so I don't give a crap. I pay roughly 6x that on mortgage. Before the world falls apart, I'm sure we can adjust the way we live at least a tiny bit. But OMG, you may have to sell you SUV and buy a geo metro. Truely the end of the world.
BTW, I'd love to see soemthing backing up that statement about you needing more energy to create a solar panel than all the energy you will ever get out of it. Smells like slanted anti-alternative-energy BS to me, but if you got it from another article or source I'd be interested hearing their twisted logic OR I could even learn something and find out I'm wrong, but i highly doubt it on this issue. Perhaps you're thinking of Ethonal. Either way, source please.
The mortgage crisis.. I guess I don't give a shit. There aren't any losers here. You have gready companies who sold a lot of mortgages when times were good never considering that things may turn south because that might impact their current earnings portfolio. If some of them go belly up its no big shakes to me. I frankly think a few of them SHOULD be put out of business becuase if there was anyone in this mess who was at fault, it was them.
Then you have greedy homeowners who took crazy ass loans or "no paperwork required" loans. Look, buying a house is easily the single biggest investment of your life. If you don't run a few numbers through excel and say "does this make sense" then I don't really feel a lot of pity for you when you can't afford your house. It most likely means you overbought when you got the house (which most people do). But now you've lost your gamble so you have to declare bankruptcy and have to wait 7 years before you buy another house. It's not the end of the world. It sucks, but you took a gamble because housing prices were going up and up and everybody but you was getting rich but you... and now the bubble's burst.
The US is a strong country and we can survive all of these things. The world is not coming to an end. The sky is not falling.
Thank you, but I'll save my pity for a bunch of children who died when their school's clasped after the earthquake in China or other people who actually deserve it.
don
Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years (Score:4, Insightful)
Photovoltaics are still messy, but solar-thermal plants are entirely doable, both technologically and economically. The trouble is, as you said, that the "powers that be" apparently have zero serious interest in replacing coal plants with anything different.
Over the years I've noticed a growing disconnect between US leaders and citizenry. I'm tempted to opine that your "leaders" simply don't give a damn; the US really needs to give the Old Guard the boot at the next election, on both sides of your weird two-party-one-horse government. I remember when your dollar was worth two of ours - now it's heading the other way around.
Re:Just another energy-wasting toy for the rich (Score:3, Insightful)
And, thanks for pointing that other one out, I thank the people who bought the first expensive cars with anti-lock brakes (again, not used the first time by Mercedes, but still greatly improved by them and Bosch [wikipedia.org], so that not only the driver with amazing driving "skillz" like you can brake safely, but also the unexperienced driver behind him (!) so that that one wont crash into the driver who knew who to stop safely. You're not the only one on the road, you know.
Re:whatever, good questions (Score:4, Insightful)
That has its uses as a way of educating others on why the fallacies are wrong, but it sure takes up a lot of time and text.
Re:Unimaginable? I beg to differ, but where'd it g (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years (Score:3, Insightful)
BTW, our Congress is 49% Democract, 49% Republican, 2% independents who tend to vote Democrat. Our House of Representatives is 56% Democrat. Guess what body of the government passed the budgets according to the President's whims? Yep, the Democrat-controlled Congress, which has an even lower satisfaction rating (16%-22% by many sources) than Bush.
Many of us in the US have been pushing for the minor parties to gain ground on the Democrat/Republican duopoly, since they're pretty much working together towards mostly common goals while appearing to be at one another's throats.
Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years (Score:3, Insightful)
The US is in an ongoing state of economic collapse. Unemployment is at levels unseen since the depression in many places.
We are at the very minimum in a recession. And as the housing market continues to go in the toilet, which some believe will continue at the least until the baby boomer die-off reaches its crescendo in 2025, there will be more defaults on mortgages, and dropping property values - leading to dropping property taxes. This will increase municipal debt at a time in which the federal debt has reached, frankly, truly unfathomable proportions.
We didn't escape from the "Great Depression" until the end of WWII, due largely to economic sanctions placed on Germany and Japan. But you can't squeeze blood from a turnip...
Where is the money supposed to come from?
Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years (Score:3, Insightful)
My (limited) understanding is that the problem is actually with the dollar no longer being tied to the gold standard, but to the petroleum standard.
Currencies are worth what they're backed by. The value of petroleum is based on pure market manipulation and bullshit. Consequently, our economy is all manipulation and bullshit.
I am not an economist, so hopefully someone else can come along and regulate and explain more, or explain why I'm off my rocker, or whatever.
Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years (Score:3, Insightful)
You're saying that there are all sorts of brilliant would-be regulations just waiting in the wings, about which their democrat authors aren't saying a peep, because it will make them look bad? As bad as spending weeks and millions of dollars holding hearings about steroid use by baseball players? As bad as not ejecting a fellow democrat from congress after $90,000 in cash bribe money is found in his freezer... and then putting him on the DHS oversight committee? How brilliant can this hidden legislation be if it can't even get a simple majority in the house they run to consider voting for it? Ah... perhaps that's because it doesn't exist, and the GP was blowing hot air out of ignorance about how such things work, and you're really stretching it to give him some cover. It's just silly.
Re:I predicted the demise of Tesla in 3 years (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, they do. Every single elected offical in Washington cares deeply about their country
What?
This proves that you have no idea what you are talking about.
People who care about this country are not starting illegal wars, driving up the national debt, getting rich in the process, and then taking the money out of the country and doing further harm to our economy.
Are you paid to say this shit, or are you just brainwashed?
The US is FAR from bankrupt. China's only where they are in the world because we're allowing them to grossly distort the currency exchange, because we want them to work for peanuts.
The US's debt is truly astronomical. We're overdrawn on our credit as it is.
Nuclear: Plans are on the tables, Greenpeace's founder is endorsing Nuclear... sorry, there will be new plants built or chartered by the next Presidential Election. Maybe before this one.
Greenpeace's founder's opinion is not being echoed by Greenpeace. 9 out of 10 hippies I talk to (this is not scientific but I talk to a lot of hippies) just refuse to come around to the idea of nuclear with breeder reactors. Incidentally, if we don't use breeders then using nuclear is a HORRIBLE and TERRIBLE idea; we can gain a couple orders of magnitude in efficiency this way. With breeders, nuclear can be not just practical but also profitable without subsidies.
Solar: Ok, in small batches, for small device use, in the northeast, a photovotalic cell takes more energy to create than it will produce in its lifetime.
Who told you that? It COSTS MORE TO BUY than it will save you in its lifetime, but that is the result of market forces, not physics.
Think about it for a second; a solar system pays you off monetarily in about 20 years (yes, it's a long time) even without any special energy credits. Are you really saying that the power company charges me more for power (and I'm just talking about base rates here) than the sum of the amount that they charge the people who make the panels plus the amount that those people charge me for costs plus their profit? Obviously it's not impossible, but it is also not true [csudh.edu] . It takes less than seven years at 12 percent, which is a pretty reasonable estimate of the actual efficiency output (who cleans their panels enough?) when your panels are supposed to be around 14 or 15%. And that was for crystalline PV, not thin film, which requires less energy expenditure. It wouldn't seem so at first because of the petroleum-based nature of the plastics involved, but it is so hugely energy intensive to produce pure silicon that it winds up being that way anyway. They also cost less to ship due to their mass being a small fraction of a completed PV panel.
Wind: Wind blows everywhere, some places essentially constantly. Couple a wind farm with a flywheel, and you can produce pretty damn good power. Essentially anywhere in the United States. Not eveywhere, but hardly "rare" for any meaningful definitions of that word.
Wind has real problems; it truly HAS been a problem for flocks of migratory birds, but that is a lesser issue to the fact that those wind turbines are not especially inexpensive to produce, they do make a lot of noise (we are slowly waking up to the effects of noise pollution) so you don't want one in your backyard, and they MUST be placed up in the air so that they get wind in most cases. This keeps small-scale wind from being broadly useful, although it IS useful in some places.
Of course, when the conveyor shuts down, and the jet stream shuts down, the weather patterns we take for granted are pretty much all going to change...
5: The mortgage crisis is just the tip of the iceberg. Its only going to be a matter of time before banks start having to be bailed left