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Transportation

United Airlines Plans To Buy Up To 500 Electric Flying Taxis (engadget.com) 50

Posted by msmash from the up-next dept.
United Airlines is moving deeper into the flying taxi business. Not only has the airline plowed $15 million into Eve Air Mobility, it ordered 200 flying taxis and has an option for another 200. United expects to start receiving Eve's four-seater electric vertical take-off and landing vehicle (eVTOL) as soon as 2026. From a report: The company says its investment was spurred by both its confidence in the urban air mobility market and Eve's working relationship with Embraer. According to United, Embrarer is "a trusted aircraft manufacturer with a proven track record of building and certifying aircraft over the company's 53-year history." Embrarer previously worked with Uber on a flying taxi project that the latter eventually ditched. Eve's flying taxi has conventional fixed wings, rotors and pushers with a design that United says favors safety, efficiency, reliability and certifiability. It's said to have a range of 60 miles and United added that the vehicle can "reduce noise levels by 90 percent compared to current conventional aircraft."
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United Airlines Plans To Buy Up To 500 Electric Flying Taxis More

United Airlines Plans To Buy Up To 500 Electric Flying Taxis

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  • Airport to Airport shuttle (Score:4, Informative)

    by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Friday September 09, 2022 @04:15PM (#62868079)

    An obvious first application would be a shuttle between nearby airports. SJC to SFO, JFK to Newark, etc. They could lift off and land inside the security perimeters, so passengers could skip the TSA lines.

    Flying over traffic congestion would be another big market. San Jose to Palo Alto to downtown SF. NJ and CT to lower Manhattan, etc.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by b0s0z0ku ( 752509 )
      Or we could have working public transit in the Untied Stinkholes, but noooo, muh flying cars.

      • Public transit would be just fine if we would let the cops kick off the dirty filthy fucking bums. Maybe then people would actually want to ride it.

      • NYC and SF are dense metro areas and liberal bastions with strong support for public transit.

        Even they have failed to provide decent transit options for most people.

        America will have flying cars long before decent public transit.

        • True about SF; public transit works decently well in NYC. This being said, I can move to Europe (EU country passport) and I'm considering Germany or Austria ... I want to live somewhere with lovely trains, not techbrat flying cars. Planes are boring, trains are lovely.

  • the vehicle can "reduce noise levels by 90 percent compared to current conventional aircraft."

    But they're gonna be flying a lot lower, too -- which means they will be closer to the ground where all the people are. Unless the typical distance from the aircraft to the measurement point is taken into consideration, it's super easy to abuse a stat like this.

    • the vehicle can "reduce noise levels by 90 percent compared to current conventional aircraft."

      Don't believe it until you hear it. And if it's true, let's hope they share with Cessna and Piper

      • Piper Aircraft Partners with CAE on Electric Aircraft Program

        • Actually the issue is the propeller, they haven't changed for a hundred years, this is a job for Hamilton Standard, McCauley, and Hartzell, but moving air really fast is always going to be really noisy

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bjoast ( 1310293 )
      And soon, there's going to be plenty of them in the sky, because we're not exactly running out of rich people. Electric cars have barely become popular enough to decrease city noise and now flying "cars" are here. Yay.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      The "conventional aircraft" they're comparing to are helicopters. The multi-rotor taxi things will probably fly much the same way the choppers do today.

    • Drones are fucking loud. The loudness increases with size & to carry 4 fat rich people at a time, that's a lot of noise. These'll be used for places that are more residential, where it's too difficult to use traditional helicopters. Just another way for rich people to piss everyone else off.

      Have you noticed how all the drone taxi promo videos don't ever play the ambient sound, even from inside the taxis? You'll probably need those expensive pilot headsets with heavy isolation & active noise cancell
      • To some extent, drones are loud for their size because the overall size and frequency of use means there has been no great requirement to optimise for being quiet. In this case, there probably would be.
        • According to a reviewer I found, they have apparently tried to address the noise issue, claiming success but the reviewer commented on how it would be pretty much impossible to have a conversation inside the cab. Maybe if everyone shouted very loudly? I suspect that in this case, the "quieter" claim probably means less need for ear protectors &/or less hearing damage.

  • The extra 100 vehicles noted in TFA (Score:3)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Friday September 09, 2022 @04:47PM (#62868201)

    Title: United Airlines Plans To Buy Up To 500 Electric Flying Taxis

    Buying 500 taxis ...

    TFS: ... it ordered 200 flying taxis and has an option for another 200.

    Buying 200 taxis + option for 200 taxis = 400 taxis.

    TFA notes:

    Last month, [United] put down a $10 million deposit with a different California-based one for 100 flying taxis.

    • "Up to" means "less than."

      It is a common term used by weasely journalists to sound impressive while saying nothing.

      I have up to a million dollars in my pocket.

  • They'll need a zero carbon electricity source. (Score:3)

    by MacMann ( 7518492 ) on Friday September 09, 2022 @05:04PM (#62868297)

    It's nice to see people finally figure out that electric aircraft aren't going to be carrying 100+ people over oceans. Computer generated animations of electric airliners is just a fantasy. In an interview Elon Musk did a bit of a thought experiment on what it would take to get an electric airliner to fly, giving estimates on the size and weight of things. We could see in theory an electric airliner fly but it would look a lot like a Saturn V rocket to take people to the moon, a huge machine built for maybe a half dozen people on board. The electric airliner would be mostly a battery with wings, then a tiny little cabin up front for the crew and passengers. Someone might actually make one at some point just to prove it can be done. After that it's going to spend more time sitting to charge than flying.

    Even with these short distance VTOL aircraft they are likely to spend more time sitting to charge than flying. I guess if an airport has a hundred of these things to take people to and from the airport in a high population density area it might make sense. People willing to pay the fare could have a little electric quad-copter pick them and their assistant/mistress/whatever from the pad on top of some tall downtown building, then out to the airport to get to a more conventional kerosene burning jet plane. There might be money to be made with a service like that. They might have to keep the electric aircraft parked on the buildings to charge overnight or they might not make it to the airport in one charge. I can imagine they'd be quite sensitive to weather, as in not able to fly in high winds, rain, fog, etc.

    If this electric quad-copter can be cheap enough then I can imagine it being something for recreational private pilots to take on little sightseeing tours, or take a slow cross country trip.

    Most of all the problem with getting this to be zero carbon is finding enough electricity that is zero carbon to charge them up. The airlines and airports might want to invest in a small modular fission reactor they can bury underground at the airport. Then with that electricity they can charge up their electric aircraft. But then if they have a reliable source of low CO2 heat and electricity then why not just synthesize carbon neutral jet fuels?

    Carbon neutral jet fuels are already a thing. Electric aircraft are already obsolete. Just synthesize some carbon neutral fuels and use that in the aircraft we already have. The carbon neutral fuels don't have to be kerosene but that's the most obvious place to start.

  • The problem with the air taxi idea is the limited number of pilots.

    It takes years and about $30k to become a multi-engine commercial airline pilot. To become a private pilot flying rich people around it takes months, and about $10k.

    Until we trust AI to take off and land a small private plane, which is NOT what this article is about, it makes little to no sense for a pilot to run an air-taxi service.

    The amount they would have to charge to do so means only the very rich can afford it. Not enough business

    • I suspect they're anticipating a reduction in the number of long haul flights. Maybe they know something we don't about impending fuel prices, in which case I really need to get cracking on getting my fucking ford fixed and sold

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cstacy ( 534252 )

      The problem with the air taxi idea is the limited number of pilots.

      The fantasy is that it will be autonomous robot pilots.

      Positive factors include: (1) this is a lot easier than making a self-driving car; we pretty much have it working already because (2) very specific and limited flights, not anything like randomly picking up and dropping off anywhere at all.

      Negatives: I don't understand the flight failure modes - and I think we're talking about quite a few different kinds of aircraft anyway. For example, the Johnny Quest flying trashcan type craft would just plummet out

  • But it's probably virtue signalling on the part of United Airlines.
  • As a pilot I think these are nifty aircraft. However, most or all are unlikely to be certified for "flight in known icing" (FIKI) weather conditions. That means the aircraft would not be permitted to fly in some types of weather, and that is a problem for a commercial airline.

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