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Google Transportation

Larry Page Is Secretly Working On a Flying Car (bloomberg.com) 152

Google co-founder Larry Page is personally investing in flying cars. Page has been secretly bankrolling Zee.Aero and Kitty Hawk, two California-based startups working on developing a flying car, reports Bloomberg, citing 10 people familiar with the matter. From the report: Better materials, autonomous navigation systems, and other technical advances have convinced a growing body of smart, wealthy, and apparently serious people that within the next few years we'll have a self-flying car that takes off and lands vertically -- or at least a small, electric, mostly autonomous commuter plane. About a dozen companies around the world, including startups and giant aerospace manufacturers, are working on prototypes. Furthest along, it appears, are the companies Page is quietly funding. "Over the past five years, there have been these tremendous advances in the underlying technology," says Mark Moore, an aeronautical engineer who's spent his career designing advanced aircraft at NASA. "What appears in the next 5 to 10 years will be incredible."
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Larry Page Is Secretly Working On a Flying Car

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  • by colinrichardday ( 768814 ) <colin.day.6@hotmail.com> on Thursday June 09, 2016 @10:22AM (#52281535)

    Well, it's about time. But will this really make commuting easier?

    • Re:It's about time (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 09, 2016 @10:28AM (#52281569)

      will this really make commuting easier?

      For Larry Page? Probably. For your great grand children? Yes. For you? Not likely.

    • Re:It's about time (Score:5, Insightful)

      by zenlessyank ( 748553 ) on Thursday June 09, 2016 @10:36AM (#52281617)
      For the 1%ers, yes. For everyone else... fuck off and click the ads while we track and spam you.
      • For the 1%ers, yes.

        Cars were once only for the 1%. President Wilson called them a symbol of "the arrogance of wealth". He predicted that the country would move toward socialism because the middle class would envy the rich for their automobiles, something they obviously could never afford for themselves. It didn't turn out that way.

    • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      When you're stuck in traffic you look up into the sky and see all that unused space. Being limited to 2D feels silly in that situation.

      But to make flying cars practical in cities, they'll probably have to be computer-controlled. When something goes wrong, a vehicle will probably have to use GPS (or similar) against a database of candidate emergency landing spots. Most human pilots can't memorize all the good spots.

      • Re:It's about time (Score:5, Insightful)

        by FlyHelicopters ( 1540845 ) on Thursday June 09, 2016 @10:47AM (#52281675)

        But to make flying cars practical in cities, they'll probably have to be computer-controlled.

        They also need a new power source... because the current real problem with flying cars is the energy problem...

        • They also need a new power source... because the current real problem with flying cars is the energy problem...

          There are many problems, among them: extra weight needed for street legal operation; conflict between aerodynamic configuration and road vehicle form factor including need to fit into a standard parking space; payload constraints; weight and balance (forget the back seat); safety (what is the glide angle if any if the engine stops); noise control; limited market; regulation. Even Mr fusion won't solve all the problems.

          It is abundantly clear that the vtol light private plane problem needs to be solved first,

          • The technology is doable now, but the safety issues are not. Flying cars must be computer controlled, otherwise you'll have a lot of accidents. People can't navigate in 2D safely, now you want 3D with no painted lines or traffic lights?
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Re:It's about time (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ThosLives ( 686517 ) on Thursday June 09, 2016 @11:01AM (#52281769) Journal

        When you're stuck in traffic you look up into the sky and see all that unused space. Being limited to 2D feels silly in that situation.

        You might want to read up on what happens at Oshkosh every year. That's what commuting by air would look like when everyone wants to go to/from the same place. Couple that with electric aircraft with extremely limited flight durations and the tendency of people to not refuel their cars / aircraft with the idea of a contingency situation...

        Computer control isn't even going to help you there, unless the computer control allows zero deviation from a programmed start and destination so it can guarantee a no-take-off if there is insufficient fuel/charge to make that flight plus required reserves due to unforeseen traffic, weather, etc.

        • Re:It's about time (Score:4, Interesting)

          by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Thursday June 09, 2016 @12:57PM (#52282587) Homepage Journal

          You might want to read up on what happens at Oshkosh every year. That's what commuting by air would look like when everyone wants to go to/from the same place. Couple that with electric aircraft with extremely limited flight durations and the tendency of people to not refuel their cars / aircraft with the idea of a contingency situation...

          As long as you limit its altitude, lack of refueling isn't necessarily a big problem. Just design it to refuse to fly more than thirty feet above the current road grade, and ensure that it is designed to automatically find a spot to land when it gets below two minutes of charge. The issue of getting a tow is, of course, still a problem, but at least you won't have it falling out of the sky on top of someone.

          This sort of design would allow for two (and in some cases, three) layers of traffic instead of one, and would allow detours around wrecks without having to necessarily be precisely above the road surface, which would basically fix everything that's wrong with freeways, but without turning it into a free-for-all and interfering with normal air traffic. There would, of course, be no-fly zones, such as the stretches of 101 and 880 at the ends of the SJC airport runway, but this would also open up the use of 87 as a cutacross, so in a pinch, a lot of folks could avoid problems on the ground layer, reducing the impact of the problem.

          • When flying, altitude gives you time to deal with the unexpected. 30 ft is the last altitude you'd want to cruise at.

          • Just design it to refuse to fly more than thirty feet above the current road grade, and ensure that it is designed to automatically find a spot to land when it gets below two minutes of charge. [...] This sort of design would allow for two (and in some cases, three) layers of traffic instead of one...

            You can't really stack "helicopters" (which is what flying cars really are) nearly that tightly. So with only 30 feet of height you'll only have one layer. And you'll be blowing up a gale of dirt and debris from the roadway all the time, hitting not only everything beside the roadway, but also risk fliers behind you. The same is true of vortexes, you have to have sufficient horisontal as well as vertical separation. It's not for nothing that helicopters flying in formation fly either absolutely level, or in

        • by Agripa ( 139780 )

          Just make manual control of a flying car over a populated area an organ bank crime.

    • by fsagx ( 1936954 ) on Thursday June 09, 2016 @10:45AM (#52281657)

      But will it fold into a briefcase?

    • by sjbe ( 173966 ) on Thursday June 09, 2016 @11:45AM (#52282119)

      Well, it's about time.

      About time for what? A fragile, expensive, complicated, inefficient vehicle that won't fly or drive very well, that few people can actually operate safely and that nobody actually needs? What problem does a flying car actually solve for anyone better than what is available now? To fly it you have to drive to an airport anyway in most cases where there already are planes available. How is a flying car any more useful than driving to an airport, flying in a real plane and then renting a car at your destination? The number of use cases where a flying car would provide an actual advantage is vanishingly small.

      But will this really make commuting easier?

      Not even a little bit even if we presume that it is technologically or economically feasible. Which it isn't.

      • by lgw ( 121541 )

        This sounds like a short-distance plane, not a normal light plane. Electric, V/STOL, automated so there's no real skill required. Sounds useful to me as long as it can safely land in a parking lot.

        Doesn't sound feasible to me, but then self-driving cars didn't either 5 years ago.

        • Electric, V/STOL, automated so there's no real skill required. Sounds useful to me as long as it can safely land in a parking lot.

          We don't have an energy source adequate to do electric flying propulsion - not even close. V/STOL is very expensive - you're basically talking about a helicopter or tilt-rotor - and very complicated. The maintenance alone would be prohibitively expensive. We don't have anywhere close to the level of automation required for fully automated piloting and we don't have appropriate infrastructure either. You can't just land in a parking lot safely. Prop wash is a real thing and you have to design landing pa

          • by lgw ( 121541 )

            The only thing that sounds likely to me for self-flying is a volocopter, or similar many-fixed-rotor design. Everything else is too difficult to land. Already flying people short distances (at least, experimentally). I don't see how you'd add enough weight for road safety and ever get off the ground, though - that adds orders of magnitude to the problem, at which point even if you did it it would be huge.

            Self-driving cars are very near, though, in automotive development terms. Volvo claims to be getting

          • by Rei ( 128717 )

            We don't have an energy source adequate to do electric flying propulsion

            Shh, don't tell these people! [google.com]

            A flying car is a FAR more difficult problem to solve than a self driving car

            Yes, all of those flying pedestrians darting out into your path, other commuters slamming on the brakes to avoid a flying cat, drivers going the wrong way down a one-way air lane, your maximum rate of cornering varying by a couple orders of magnitude depending on conditions just like an icy vs. dry road...

            • Shh, don't tell these people!

              Allow me roll my eyes. Yes people are working on electric airplanes. No they haven't gotten very far with them and their efforts certainly are nothing that is going to result in a mass production flying car within my lifetime. Why? The best power source we have available are some lithium batteries which are great but still have a power to weight ratio that limits flight to short duration flights of very light aircraft. A very light aircraft makes for a very terrible road going car. Even as airplanes t

              • by Rei ( 128717 )

                Allow me roll my eyes. Yes people are working on electric airplanes. No they haven't gotten very far with them

                You might as well say the same thing about smartphones. They exist. They're for sale. People buy them. And they use them. It's an existing market. And one that's growing very rapidly. And their performance is quite nice [wired.com]. A number now offer ranges of about 400km at cruising speeds, similar to electric cars.

                It doesn't matter what "eye rolling" you do, these things exists, the scale of the mark

      • A fragile, expensive, complicated, inefficient vehicle that won't fly or drive very well, that few people can actually operate safely and that nobody actually needs?

        Much like a sailboat.

        • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          It's hard to think of a boat that's more fuel efficient than a sailboat.

          • It's hard to think of a boat that's more fuel efficient than a sailboat.

            Not to mention that sailing is a solved problem. You can move a huge sailboat vast distances with comparatively modest power requirements and nobody is trying to get a sailboat to be amphibious. What would be absurd would be trying to adapt a sailboat to drive on roads. That is basically what people are trying to do with flying cars (which really are driving planes). Even if you manage to get it to work it's not going to do a very good job of flying or driving (or sailing). A sailboat is great in the

            • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

              Funny, people have adapted sailboats to work on roads. Or off them even.

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

              There was a blog about someone who converted a small keelboat into a sailing RV and sailed it around Iceland (on the highway) too.

              • Funny, people have adapted sailboats to work on roads. Or off them even.

                Just because something is technically possible doesn't make it a good idea. An amphibious sailboat is a fun but dumb idea. A flying car is a fun but dumb idea.

                • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

                  Actually, the land sailers are a lot of fun. They work even better (where better means goes faster and is more likely to kill you) because wheels provide less friction in the direction you want to go and more in the direction you don't.

                  Planes that drive on highways? When did "flying car" come to mean a plane that drives on a highway? The prototypical Jetson's flying car doesn't do anything like that.

                  Slashdot has filled up with unimaginative luddites. Flying cars will use the loads of helipads and short

      • by Rei ( 128717 )

        There's a general rule of thumb for flying cars: it's either going to be a bad car, a bad plane, or both.

        IMHO, choose "bad plane". Brute force yourself aloft (at the cost of range). Electric motors today have extreme power densities, and lithium ion batteries have impressive power densities as well. Accept a poor L/D ratio and thus short flight times, in favor of carlike safety and normal driving characteristics. You'll have a much more practical vehicle that way, and still something that can let you zip

      • by Rakarra ( 112805 )

        Well, it's about time.

        About time for what? A fragile, expensive, complicated, inefficient vehicle that won't fly or drive very well, that few people can actually operate safely and that nobody actually needs? What problem does a flying car actually solve for anyone better than what is available now?

        Well there's the ideal flying car, and there's the more realistic flying car.
        The ideal flying car aims to solve a very real problem that we have no easy way of solving at the moment -- road traffic. Specifically, that to get from one place to another you are often bottlenecking a large number of cars into a small area. I'm mostly thinking freeways at the moment. Physical limitations prevent us from building out 10 or 20-lane-wide freeways.

        To fly it you have to drive to an airport anyway in most cases where there already are planes available. How is a flying car any more useful than driving to an airport, flying in a real plane and then renting a car at your destination? The number of use cases where a flying car would provide an actual advantage is vanishingly small.

        To have to go to an airport to be able to use a flying car really wou

        • A city wide turbo-lift system would solve our traffic problems. Every intersection would have elevator booths, and once below grade you travel horizontally at high speed. No obstacles in the road, no weather, no parking problems.
    • will this really make commuting easier?

      Grossly energy inefficient, noisier and considerably more dangerous, rather like a helicopter. The notion of making such a vehicle street legal is, in a word, absurd. If you can afford such a toy then you can afford to have someone meet you at the landing pad with a real car.

  • Thanks. (Score:5, Funny)

    by freeze128 ( 544774 ) on Thursday June 09, 2016 @10:27AM (#52281563)
    Well, gee, it's not much of a SECRET now, is it?
  • >> Google co-founder Larry Page is personally investing in flying cars.

    Sweet - I wonder if he'll also go in with me on an emu farm - I've heard they're the next big thing!
  • by American AC in Paris ( 230456 ) on Thursday June 09, 2016 @10:34AM (#52281607) Homepage

    Larry Page Was Secretly Working On a Flying Car

  • You're going to need better fences.

  • by FlyHelicopters ( 1540845 ) on Thursday June 09, 2016 @10:41AM (#52281645)

    Well that's nice and all, but this is just rich people with ego vanity projects...

    It only takes some basic math of the energy required to lift a pound into the air, then move it forward in the air, to see the problems with this.

    This has been tried over and over for years, by people who either don't understand the issues, or don't care and assuming magic will happen.

    The whole thing is beyond absurd... As Homer Simpson once said, "Lisa, in this house we obey the laws of Thermodynamics!"

    • by Quantus347 ( 1220456 ) on Thursday June 09, 2016 @10:54AM (#52281719)
      Well....there is actually nothing wrong with the physical of air travel. We've kind of been doing it for over a century now. The issues with the perpetually promised "Flying Cars" (ie consumer-grade planes) are in regulation vs liability, and the need for autonomous control. And of course fuel prices. We can and have built Flying Cars/Drivable planes. The issue is that you still need to have a pilot's license. Otherwise you have some nimrod that is texting at the stick plow into the side of a building or crash into the middle of a suburb.
      • Well....there is actually nothing wrong with the physical of air travel. We've kind of been doing it for over a century now.

        Never said there was a problem with air travel...

        I said there was a problem with the energy required to make a flying car work for not stupid money...

        We can and have built Flying Cars/Drivable planes.

        No, not really... a few toys have been built, none that are remotely practical or commercially viable...

        And the reasons for that are not going to be solved by designing another one using current technology...

    • by Overzeetop ( 214511 ) on Thursday June 09, 2016 @11:06AM (#52281807) Journal

      The same can be said of traditional aircraft. There are, indeed, limits - some of which have been overcome and some of which still aren't quite practical (stored energy density for electrically driven aircraft, for example). Most of the things which make small flight vehicles "impossible" revolve around efficiency. There are limits to that, as well, but I'm not convinced that we are anywhere close to our limits.

      • The same can be said of traditional aircraft.

        No, it can't...

        There are, indeed, limits

        Yes, there are...

        some of which have been overcome

        No, they haven't...

        I'm not convinced that we are anywhere close to our limits.

        Well great, because YOU'RE NOT FUCKING CONVINCED THEN IT MUST WORK...

  • by monkeyxpress ( 4016725 ) on Thursday June 09, 2016 @10:46AM (#52281663)

    This is slightly off topic, but does anyone else find it weird that we are on the cusp of all these radical new technology breakthroughs, yet we can no longer build enough new houses each year to keep up with population growth?

    Imagine telling someone in the 1960s, when houses and transport infrastructure were being developed at record pace, that in the future we would indeed have the wrist watch phones and flying cars, but a high income family wouldn't be able to afford a rundown victorian era worker's cottage within an hour's commute of their job.

    Something has gone very wrong with our economy if it is delivery these sorts of toys, yet basic needs go begging.

    • by kwerle ( 39371 ) <kurt@CircleW.org> on Thursday June 09, 2016 @10:57AM (#52281747) Homepage Journal

      You seem to have confused real estate with buildings. I don't think many folks would be surprised to hear that desirable real estate would continue to increase in value.

      There are plenty of reasonably priced brand new homes in places you don't want to live. Telecommute or find an employer that doesn't insist on being located where a million folks want to be but there is only room for half that many.

      Or wait a few years - the bubble will burst and start to blow up again.

    • by swb ( 14022 ) on Thursday June 09, 2016 @10:59AM (#52281761)

      It just strikes me as an example of the mix of wealth inequality and the growing complexity enabled by technology.

      If you ever tour old mansions, they really aren't as super huge as you might imagine and the level of technological complexity they have is minor -- maybe central heat or electricity, depending on when they were built. And a fair amount of the space are things devoted to extensive servant's quarters or functional areas obsoleted by modern technology. Even the kitchens seemed kind of primitive when you consider the size and complexity of the formal dinners they must have held.

      And these were homes owned by the .05%ers of the time, not the kind of homes owned by the merely rich of today. While larger and perhaps slightly more sophisticated than the middle class homes of their era, they weren't as different as the same gap today.

      Today's merely rich have much larger homes than demand many more intricate technology features, like zoned heating and cooling, sophisticated lighting controls, security systems, camera systems, giant kitchens with complex appliances, and so on.

    • by Lab Rat Jason ( 2495638 ) on Thursday June 09, 2016 @11:04AM (#52281801)

      I think there are two camps with this one... going to space helped us with all kinds of tech... so it follows that building flying cars will also make lots of amazing technology avialable, something about a rising tide mumble mumble...

      But there's also the line of thinking that if these guys have the willpower to do that, why can't we get clean drinking water for every person on the planet... or solve world hunger, or whatever great cause du jour.

      I think rich playboys pick things like rockets and flying cars because it allows them an intellectual outlet while avoiding the nasty business of fixing the "human problems" like warlords, ignorance and superstition, and apathy. Those are the real reasons we have starving people on this planet... not because of lack of technology.

      Also, I have to agree about the price of housing. Why all tech companies all have to be physically located within walking distance of each other befuddles me. Hopefully one day Tele-presence tech will get good enough that it doesn't matter where you live, and commuting will be a thing of the past... Then you can live where you want and not have to worry about traffic and insane housing costs.

      • by Pascoea ( 968200 )

        while avoiding the nasty business of fixing the "human problems" like warlords, ignorance and superstition, and apathy.

        I'm not trying to be crass, but we are working on rockets and flying cars because they are solvable engineering problems (and there is profit potential). Warlords, ignorance, superstition, apathy... Good luck with those. A couple generations of better information access might HELP the problem, but good luck doing anything that upsets the balance of power. Those in power will take drastic and severe steps to retain that power. Hell, we can't even get Internet to people in Cuba.

        At least world hunger and

        • Solving world hunger is a much harder problem than you think. In most of the third world the only limit on population growth is food. So if you grow twice as much food then the population doubles (in 10 years) and you're right back to starvation. The only effective method (so far) to solve world hunger is to raise the standard of living to the point they stop having all those kids, then the problem solves itself.
      • Then you can live where you want and not have to worry about traffic and insane housing costs.

        If you haven't been replaced by an Indian (or whoever will be undercutting them in a decade or so).

    • This is slightly off topic, but does anyone else find it weird that we are on the cusp of all these radical new technology breakthroughs, yet we can no longer build enough new houses each year to keep up with population growth?

      What are you talking about? We have no trouble building enough housing. If anything we have the problem that we have too much housing in many places. That's a big part of the reason we had the economic crash in 2008. The housing market is cyclical and sometimes there is more capacity than others but there isn't any sort of meaningful inability to build enough housing.

      Imagine telling someone in the 1960s, when houses and transport infrastructure were being developed at record pace, that in the future we would indeed have the wrist watch phones and flying cars, but a high income family wouldn't be able to afford a rundown victorian era worker's cottage within an hour's commute of their job.

      I don't know where you live but that doesn't describe anywhere within a 500 mile radius of where I live. Out here in the real world that

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Bruce Perens ( 3872 )

      I bought 10 acres of land in far-northern California high desert for a whole $4000 a few years ago. It's good for astronomy and ham radio. Siskiyou County would let me build a whole arcology there if I wanted to. But I'd have to drill really deep to have reliable water, and there are no jobs, and you can only grow hay there, it's a mile and a half from paved roads, utility power, and wired internet, 12 miles from the first hole-in-the-wall restaurant or coffee shop, and there's really very little reason to

    • Not really since these are apples and oranges. Technology continues to advance, making most consumer devices cheaper and more powerful. Food and clothing are also incredibly cheap from an historical point of view.

      At the same time, real estate in many areas is not getting cheaper, because there is limited supply and the demand for those locations continues to increase. If _everybody_ tries to move to San Francisco, then the price goes up. However, there is lots of land and houses available for people in

    • These aren't new technology breakthroughs, flying cars have been around for awhile, and there's nothing particularly radical about Uber, AirBnB, nor TaskRabbit, LawTrades or HouseCall, they are simply using apps to get around regulated industries and taxes --- a scam, which was why France jailed some top Uber executives, etc.

      Virtually all the real progress extends from the NASA Moon project, instituted by the Kennedy Administration, as was the Internet, which allows for the Web to exist today. No admin
    • To understand what has gone "wrong" with the economy, please read the following:

      The Rich and the Super-Rich, by Ferdinand Lundberg
      The Rockefeller Syndrome, by Ferdinand Lundberg
      Treasure Islands, by Nicholas Shaxson
      The Web of Debt, by Ellen Brown
      Killing the Host, by Michael Hudson
      The Bubble and Beyond, by Michael Hudson
      Open Secret, by Erin Arvidlund
      Sold Out, by Michelle Malkin
      Outsourcing America, by Ron Hira
      Disrupted, by Dan Lyons
    • by Rakarra ( 112805 )

      that in the future we would indeed have the wrist watch phones and flying cars, but a high income family wouldn't be able to afford a rundown victorian era worker's cottage within an hour's commute of their job.

      There's plenty of "space" out there. The reason that rundown cottage is so expensive is that SO MANY people want to live in a very small area. They don't want to live in Bumfuck, West Virginia, or Hopeless, Arkansas. They want to live in New York, San Francisco, Austin, Seattle, basically the hot centers of activity where the jobs are. "Space" is not that scarce of a resource, but "space near this particular city center" is. The larger the demand grows for a very limited supply, the more expensive that s

    • by Agripa ( 139780 )

      This is slightly off topic, but does anyone else find it weird that we are on the cusp of all these radical new technology breakthroughs, yet we can no longer build enough new houses each year to keep up with population growth?

      The physical process of building houses is the easy part. What we cannot do is issue permits and that is an unsolvable political problem.

    • Our housing problem is because everyone wants to live in the suburbs instead of high density apartments. Also our paychecks have been going down (in spending power) for decades.
  • by OzPeter ( 195038 ) on Thursday June 09, 2016 @10:48AM (#52281683)

    Everything that has been touted as a flying car is in reality a Driving Plane.

    These devices have to meet much stricter regulation (via entities such as the FAA) than any car would need to meet to be roadworthy. I can take a s ledge hammer to my car and still legally be able to drive it on the road, but try that with a plane and see how far that gets you.

  • Flying cars (Score:5, Funny)

    by ShieldW0lf ( 601553 ) on Thursday June 09, 2016 @10:49AM (#52281691) Journal

    Flying cars... because "Larry Page Is Secretly Working On an Airplane" just sounds boring.

  • If I look at the number of idiots / texters / drunks that I see on the road right now, I'm quite sure having all these people in a 3d space 100m up in the air is going to be very safe indeed.

  • by kheldan ( 1460303 ) on Thursday June 09, 2016 @11:02AM (#52281777) Journal
    You know what it means when someone says that, don't you, Slashdotters? It means it's just an idea they had, and they have a vague idea how to do it, but none of the details are worked out yet and they don't even have a proof-of-concept yet. It's basically clickbait for investors who have more dollars than sense.
  • Flying cars have to fight against gravity, which will always make them less efficient than ground based cars that mainly have to deal with friction.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • helicopters have to fight against gravity, which will always make them less efficient than ground based cars that mainly have to deal with friction.

      hovercraft have to fight against gravity....

      airplanes have to fight against gravity

      rockets have to fight against gravity

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Velocopter (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Scottingham ( 2036128 ) on Thursday June 09, 2016 @11:11AM (#52281859)

    The article briefly mentioned a few of the competitors.

    My favorite of this whole new 'class' of flying machines is the Velocopter.

    It has 16 outrunner brushless DC electric motors on fixed prop blades. All flying is done essentially through the software and a single joystick (no rudder pedals or separate throttle).

    The fact that it has no actuated flight surfaces, and the blades are in a fixed position, the build complexity of this machine is waaay simpler and to lower tolerances than just about any other flying machine out there.

    Of course, right now on battery alone the range is pretty poor (prob like 15-20 min of flying time, tops), but with a gas turbine generator it should be extended quite significantly.

    While it isn't exactly the most efficient at flying compared to even helicopters, I think its simplicity, safety (very redundant), and relative quietness makes up for that.

  • Drivers can't handle simple left/right turns so they're trying out these annoying "roundabouts" here in the US, do you really want the average driver to have a FLYING vehicle?

    • Drivers can't handle simple left/right turns so they're trying out these annoying "roundabouts" here in the US, do you really want the average driver to have a FLYING vehicle?

      I think we're really talking about quieter and easier-to-fly helicopters and light aircraft that you can also drive to the airfield - for the sort of people who already fly around in helicopters or light aircraft.

      At worst/best, the guy who buys the flying car is the guy currently trying to park his Audi in your tailpipe because you're trying to overtake a horse box without going more than 20mph over the limit. There's a reassuring thought...

      they're trying out these annoying "roundabouts" here in the US

      I love that the US is introducing roundabouts just as, here in th

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Realy? Roundabouts were phased out of many locations in the US because drivers weren't skilled enough to use them. Intersections are easier to navigate because everything moves slower. They're also more inefficient because everything moves slower. Apparently your local planners are either desperate or think that local drivers have become more competent.

  • by sjbe ( 173966 ) on Thursday June 09, 2016 @11:35AM (#52282051)

    Flying cars will (almost certainly) never be a significant thing within the lifetime of anyone reading this. Yes it technically it is possible to build a (crappy) car that will fly with current technology but not in a way that has any meaningful utility. To have a genuinely useful flying car there would have to be a massive advance in compact energy sources and there is no reason to believe that will happen any time soon. There also would have to be substantial advances in automated piloting because there are relatively few trained pilots and even fewer with the financial resources to buy a frivolous vehicle like a flying car. A huge portion of the driving public can barely operate a car safely and competently. Anyone who thinks these people can handle a plane is delusional.

    Building a flying car necessarily means you end up with a device that can't fly very well and can't drive very well and fills a nonexistent need. Someone else rightly pointed out that they are really driving planes, not flying cars. To make it light enough to fly necessarily means sacrificing durability and crash-worthiness on the road. Even minor fender benders would render the vehicle unable to fly safely. Driving one in bad weather (especially snow) seems like a terrible idea. Handling will suck and it will be hard to make it comfortable and quiet. Even if you do manage make one it's going to be outrageously expensive because the market is tiny and the vehicle is needlessly complicated. So it doesn't work physically and it doesn't make sense economically.

    • Was going to post pretty much the same thing. Only thing I have to add is that there is zero (0, ziltch, nada, nothing) infrastructure built to accommodate flying cars.

    • Someone ran a stop sign while making a left turn in front me the other day... I had to slam the breaks and got a good look at her face and the back of the iPhone she was holding up and intently focused on. These people would be hitting buildings and killing people. Where they drunk? Nope, just stupid.

  • I can't wait to see it try to pass those to, you know, be legal to even use on roads.

  • It should be done this year according to Back To The Future Part II.

  • I don't trust 99% of Amuricans with drone, I don't trust 100% of Amuricans with a flying car!
  • Google are the Toni Basil of the computing world. Or Leicester City, if you prefer.

    Let someone else make it, then buy them out. After that you can fuck up the interface and scrap it.

Dennis Ritchie is twice as bright as Steve Jobs, and only half wrong. -- Jim Gettys

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