Uber CEO Sees Commercialization of Flying Taxis in 5-10 Years (reuters.com) 85
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said on Tuesday he can see commercialization of the Uber Air flying taxi service happening within five to 10 years. From a report: The U.S. ride-hailing app maker has said it expects flying vehicles to eventually become an affordable method of mass transportation.
Hey look a flying Squirrel (Score:2, Offtopic)
translation: please stop talking about homicidal Uber Eats drivers on the loose and start picturing flying cars.
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It is sad to see someone shot, but it is silly to portray the incident as something that is Uber's fault.
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It's Uber's fault. I don't like strangers coming on my property. Let alone ones that come up on my porch and take or leave things. Yet I have no problem with UPS drivers doing this. Is that strange or is it that UPS has a reputation? Uber has a reputation too-- not a good one. two words (taxi rapists). Even if something is rare or unpreventable you need to be seen doing everything you can to make it rare if you want your customer's respect. Uber's at fault for losing their own reputation.
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it is silly to portray the incident as something that is Uber's fault.
They hired some loon who shot and killed someone. I'd say that's a problem with their screening process.
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
Witnesses told police that the victim had used Uber's food delivery service to order a meal. They said that when the delivery arrived, Thornton met the driver and received his order; then, as Thornton walked away, "words may have been exchanged" between the two men, police said in a statement.
Police said shots were fired from the delivery vehicle, striking Thornton.
Patterson said that Bivines told him that Thornton was agitated by the time Bivines arrived because the driver had issues finding the location. Patterson said that when Bivines gave Thornton his food order, Thornton "jerked it" away and cursed at the driver. Thornton then reached into his jacket pocket and shouted "I'm going to f- you up," according to Bivines's attorney.
Patterson said Bivines thought the customer had a gun and that he tried to defend himself.
An unidentified man who said he was Thornton's uncle told NBC affiliate WXIA that his nephew had recently received a political science degree from Morehouse College in Atlanta and had started a new job. "Ryan was a good boy," he told the station.
An Uber spokesman said that the company is cooperating with investigators in the shooting.
"We are shocked and saddened by this news," the spokesman said in a statement. "We are working with the Atlanta Police Department, and our hearts go out to the families of those involved."
Uber launched Uber Eats several years ago as a food delivery app in which drivers pick up meals from local restaurants and deliver them to customers.
According to Uber, drivers are required to undergo a screening process, which checks driving histories and criminal histories, including the national sex offender registry. In addition, Uber bars both drivers and riders from carrying firearms in the vehicles, "to the extent permitted by applicable law," according to the company's firearm policy.
"Our goal is to ensure that everyone has a safe and reliable ride. That's why Uber prohibits riders and drivers from carrying firearms of any kind in a vehicle while using our app," Uber says on its website. The company said that drivers or riders who fail to comply with the policy may be banned from Uber.
Link to article is bad (Score:3)
points to Crypto currency Article
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Apparently you don't see the connection...
Don't feel bad, neither do I.
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Well, that's your problem. You tried to read the article. You should know better on /.
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Slashdot: We like Bitcoin so much that even our Non-Bitcoin stories are about Bitcoin! Go Bitcoin! :)
(It's too bad that this place doesn't have a CNBC like editorial policy that requires people to say how much of a financial stake they have in the product they are promoting)
5-10 years after the technology has proven itself. (Score:3)
Lets be real here. It will take that long, just to get past the regulations after the technology is proven. Self Driving cars are used in a very limited conditions, A flying taxi, will be much further along...
Unless they are just doing something with Single engine airplanes. Say someone with a Cessna license. Can make some cash giving personal flights. Then yea 5-10 years to get the legal mumbo jumbo work done.
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It's not a bad idea - I've got several friends with planes and they'd love to fly more but can't afford the fuel/maintenance costs to fly more often and this would be one way of getting around that. (maybe, if Uber doesn't shortchange them like its other drivers)
Plus there's the convenience of avoiding the TSA lines and crowds in general.
I wonder i
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It's illegal to take money for flights in private planes. Even having someone pay for fuel is a grey area, careful how you phrase the transaction.
The extra licensing/maintenance to operate as a charter is a big expense. Not going to happen.
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There's also far greater safety concerns too.
But I don't think it's insurmountable and probably why they're saying 5-10 years out - probably to hash out the legalities and not the actually DOING it part.
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No.
It's 5-10 years out because it's _bullshit_. Uber lives on hype.
Taxis are hailed on the street. Uber is a car charter service. There are no such hairs to split in aviation. Take money for a flight, carry a commercial pilot's license and charter company license.
autopilot software has a high level of testing and (Score:2)
autopilot software has a high level of testing and fail safe modes that drives up dev costs.
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Very true. No 'self driving' car company has even _started_ developing to FAA standards.
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I think you are confusing license/certification types with aircraft types. Taking money or other payment for providing the service of flying requires a commercial pilot or airline transport pilot license. There are multiple types of licenses from sport pilot, recreational pilot, private pilot, to airline transport pilot and a couple obscure ones in-between.
It is possible to accept payment for transporting a passenger in a Cessna single-prop aircraft.
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A charter Cessna has to be maintained/inspected to a higher standard than a private Cessna. They do exist, mostly in Alaska.
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The summary is the article, nigh verbatim:
https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]
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https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2018-02-20/uber-ceo-sees-commercialization-of-flying-taxis-in-5-10-years
he's short on details, meaning there are none, just a dumbass statement thinking there will be flying taxis in 5-10 years. Sorry buddy, it's not going to happen, and it's not going to happen our lifetime, maybe if you were born after 2000, maybe. What this guy lacks in knowledge he sure makes up for in imagination. If I was sitting on the Uber board, I'd be clamoring for his firing.
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It will take that long, just to get past the regulations after the technology is proven.
That doesn't mean it won't happen. It just means it won't happen in America. Just like in biotech, America's overregulation means technological leadership will occur elsewhere.
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It won't happen in Murica for a good reason.
However, I can see it happen in locations where they place little to no value on human life; Shanghai for example.
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It will take that long, just to get past the regulations after the technology is proven.
That doesn't mean it won't happen. It just means it won't happen in America. Just like in biotech, America's overregulation means technological leadership will occur elsewhere.
Pray tell, which abhorrent regulations do you think should be swept aside to allow for the speedy development of flying taxis. I mean what could possibly go wrong with a massive increase in air traffic, at low altitudes above major population centers.
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This CEO is looking dumber and dumber. First he thinks he can just turn on the profit spigot by twisting a few knobs (I don't think he understands his market or his business) and now he thinks we'll have viable flying cars/taxis in the next 5-10 years when there is practically no working prototype in existence. Right now, in today's world of automobiles, the hottest stuff is electric and self-driving. Electric is getting pretty close to polished, but still has a lot of room for improvement. Autonomous c
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This CEO is looking dumber and dumber.
His product is his company, not the services it provides. His customers are the future IPO investors, not the riders. And the more ridiculously ambitious you make a project, the more money you can demand for it during your IPO.
And by the way, small commercial jets and helicopters do exist already. For instance, you can jump on a small scheduled shared jet from San Jose to Los Angeles without having to go through a huge airport and without having to deal with all the TSA bullshit.
https://www.jetsuitex.com/de [jetsuitex.com]
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Other than the sci-fi appeal, I don't see that flying cars being more practical than regular cars. First of which is that they are less fuel efficient. You can go anywhere in a flying car which is a problem as you'll see them crashing into homes and lawns, etc.
Flying cars would allow stacking of lanes so that we could have 50 lane highways without needing to build the highways. It would allow several orders of magnitude more traffic and eliminate traffic jams and the need to build highways. That being said, I don't see flying cars ever happening until we have the ability to defy gravity and position a stopped vehicle vertically in space. Our current technologies of jets, planes, helicopters, and hovercrafts wouldn't work well with stacked vertical lanes like s
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Again I don't question theoretically you can "stack" them. I question that with cars fixed to the road, today's drivers have a habit of hitting things not on the road. Like homes and lawns.
The most obvious solution is to not let humans control their own flying vehicles anywhere they might cause a problem. You can fly over water, or over a desert, but you're not going to be allowed to fly over populated areas without an actual pilot's license.
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The most obvious solution is to not let humans control their own flying vehicles anywhere they might cause a problem. You can fly over water, or over a desert, but you're not going to be allowed to fly over populated areas without an actual pilot's license.
That would require AIs to be extremely infallible. It's on the level of sci-fi FTL drives but not seemingly practical anytime soon.
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That would require AIs to be extremely infallible. It's on the level of sci-fi FTL drives but not seemingly practical anytime soon.
What? Existing video game-level AI is capable of doing this job. Granted, not every video game is a good example, but there have long been simulations with enemy AI that doesn't fly into the ground, other planes, or into buildings.
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This is a non-starter before we even get to thinking about regulations. I doubt the Uber guy is thinking about typical light aircraft (and weather capability immediately makes doing that completely impractical outside of places with 350 VFR days per year), but probably on the lines of scaled-up quadcopters that can carry people, flying around cities - no doubt based on the recent prototype seen at CES.
It works fine for small RC drones, but the thing is: quad/hexcopters (etc) basically brute force themselves
Uber CEO sees themselves existing in 10 years? (Score:2, Funny)
Why?
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Why?
Softbank . . . hard cash.
The real link (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]
Wannabe Futurist (Score:1)
Translation: Uber CEO wants everyone to think he is cool, like Elon Musk. So he makes random predictions about the future. It isn't realistic, though.
Probably true (Score:2)
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It may not be as far off, or as outlandish an idea, as some seem to think. Both Boeing and Airbus are working on fully autonomous flight systems. And as I understand it, autopilot (the real kind, in planes, not the Tesla variety) can already handle all but the most challenging conditions, for which autonomous flights would presumably be grounded. Some carriers even have rules in place now limiting when crew can take manual control.
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"It may not be as far off, or as outlandish an idea, as some seem to think"
Yes. It is.
" Both Boeing and Airbus are working on fully autonomous flight systems. And as I understand it, autopilot (the real kind, in planes, not the Tesla variety) can already handle all but the most challenging conditions"
That, however is not the biggest nor hardest challenge that actually needs to be solved here.
1) We don't have flying cars. We aren't close to having flying cars. Autonomous flying cars isn't on the horizon, be
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1, true. 2, an electric multicopter will be cheaper to build and to maintain. 3, also true. a. Won't be allowed to fly over densest areas. b. Will need a parachute. 4, see 3a. But still true.
All of this already applies to general aviation, and chases people who want to be able to fly from their home (taxi out of a hangar there and fly away) to remote locations where nobody else wants to live. But multicopters are less of all of those things than planes or even normal helicopters are, so they won't be chased
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We don't have flying cars. We aren't close to having flying cars.
Actually, the Airbus effort is a small, car-like VTOL vehicle intended for short flights of perhaps 50 miles or less. A single passenger prototype has already flown a test flight. It might be 10 years or a bit more before it is commercially available (I've seen 2022 quoted, but that seems more hopeful that practical), but based on the comments here, that's much sooner than many people believe. Others are also in the testing phases with similar style vehicles.
Price. A small helicopter capable of carrying a couple passengers around can run $100/hr-$300/hr
Probably too soon to tell with any real accuracy
Our Robot Overlords Won't Allow It (Score:2)
Once Siri, Alexis, Google Assistant, et. al, form their super hive mind, they probably won't let us do anything as fun as flying cars.
Too dangerous, and an activity such as flying might remind the humans that they were once free.
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Too dangerous, and an activity such as flying might remind the humans that they were once free.
When was that?
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Actually, I hope that they don't let most people actually drive/fly these flying cars when they finally come out. Many of us can't even drive the ground based ones correctly, even less so after a few drinks or with a cell phone in our hands.
Not anytime soon (Score:1)
Drivers are largely idiots on a 2D driving surface. Can you imagine feckwits that ignore traffic lights, pedestrians, cyclists and other drivers operating in a 3D space? Nope, nope, nope.
Get fully-autonomous cars working well first. Once that's nailed down, if the technology even exists for 3D vehicular travel, make sure there's zero chance of any meatbags getting access to the controls before making it a reality.
Umm what? (Score:5, Informative)
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I just tried looking at Chicago to Boston for a weekend in May, looks like $15k. Looks like while they claim to be cheaper than chartered private jets, it's really not. Hell, I can pay a private pilot far less than this! Not really setting a high bar for Uber here.
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Flying taxis have been a thing for years. It's done with airplanes
Taxis come to your house and pick you up. So no, there are no flying taxis yet.
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CEO sees Uber our of business in 5-10 years (Score:3)
Re:CEO sees Uber our of business in 5-10 years (Score:4, Interesting)
But first the IPO.
Pull! (Score:1)
Yeah, that will not happen.
Nice try, fly guy, but we all know how to take those down.
Bullshit (Score:4)
Translate that! (Score:3)
Translation:
Uber CEO sees opportunity for sound bytes in the press.
Uber. Uber. Uberuberuber. Uber. Let's talk about Uber. UBER. Cows say UBER. UBER says the cows. UUUUUUUBER. Uber luddites.
the faa will not like uber independent contractor (Score:1)
the faa will not like uber independent contractor system when it comes down to responsibly for safety and upkeep.
Awesome (Score:2)
Nice try (Score:3)
As far as flying taxis, yes there are proofs of concept on this, one person super lightweight vehicles, that can fly short distances. But the energy it takes to power these is quite high. The noise is ridiculous, the areas available for take-off/landing are unavailable in the cities where this is supposed to make sense. And I assume the tech will need to be much better in the 3D environment than the 2D one. It will not ever be mass transportation.
Also, it only takes one of these https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] to set the whole process back decades.
cars will fly ... (Score:2)
Fairy tails (Score:2)
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Uber CEO is seeing things (Score:1)
Driver (Score:2)
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While you are negative on the FAA, there is more to be negative about.
Experimental licenses are available for the developers of the system to go out and fly these things with people in them. Why aren't people flying in them now?
Well, what is plan B? When something bad goes wrong (batteries die, mid-air collisions, bird strikes, etc) what happens to the occupants? Flights about about 10 feet will cause people to get hurt. Parachutes only work at higher altitudes (hundreds of feet).
Bright sunny days aren't ev