Japan Wants To Bring Flying Cars To Its Skies (bloomberg.com) 52
Japan is making a push to develop flying cars, enlisting companies including Uber and Boeing in a government-led group to bring airborne vehicles to the country in the next decade. From a report: The group will initially comprise 21 businesses and organizations, including Airbus, NEC, a Toyota Motor-backed startup called Cartivator, ANA, Japan Airlines, and Yamato, according to a statement Friday from the trade ministry in Tokyo. Delegates will gather Aug. 29 to help chart a road map this year, it said. "The Japanese government will provide appropriate support to help realize the concept of flying cars, such as creation of acceptable rules," the ministry said. Flying cars that can zoom over congested roads are closer to reality than many people think. Startups around the world are pursuing small aircraft, which were until recently only in the realm of science fiction. With Japanese companies already trailing their global peers in electric vehicles and self-driving cars, the government is showing urgency on the aircraft technology, stepping in to facilitate legislation and infrastructure to help gain leadership.
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Wow, talk about Slashdot flashbacks.
acceptable rules = faa code audit levels for softw (Score:2)
acceptable rules = faa code audit levels for software or do you want windows for airplanes with BSOD?
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I disagree. If you're restricted to runways then it's not usable as a car.
It's got to be totally usable as a car and be able to take off without a runway to be a flying car. There have been a couple of roadable airplanes built, but there has never been a flying car and there probably never will be due to various physical laws.
There will however be flying taxis, which take off and land from helipads... but they won't do anything with roads, which makes them conclusively not flying cars.
Re:Flying cars already exist (Score:4, Informative)
Glenn Curtiss built the first flying car [wikipedia.org] over a hundred years ago. There have been many others [popularmechanics.com] since.
There has never been a technical obstacle to flying cars. The obstacles are
1) Cost, since airplanes must be built to much higher safety and reliability standards because when they break down, you don't pull over to the shoulder to wait for a tow truck so much as fall out of the sky and explode.
2) To have flying cars, you have to have pilots, and a pilot's license is much more demanding to get, and needs to be, because again, if something goes wrong, you don't pull over to the shoulder to wait for a tow truck so much as fall out of the sky and explode.
3) Traffic control in three dimensions rather than two is at least an order of magnitude more complicated.
Yeah, in theory, self piloting flying cars will eliminate 2 and 3 (while making 1 that much worse), but the technology doesn't exist and no one alive today will live long enough to see it. We can't build a ground car that can drive itself in the rain, at night, on an unfamiliar road, past a construction crew. Again, adding a third dimension adds an order of magnitude more complication. To both driving the thing and traffic control.
And right now, traffic control is still run by human judgement, with a few thousand planes in the air at any given time. Increase the number of vehicles by three orders of magnitude, with a minimum of a thousand feet required between them at all times, and remember, most of them will be piloted by someone shaving their armpits and eating breakfast at the same time, and you have a good pitch for a sit-com, or a prospectus with which to fleece investors, but not something we'll see any time soon.
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Just OMG... do you realize that instead of left and right, the driver of the vehicle would be responsible for managing yaw, pitch and roll?
I was stuck behind a learner driver (in the middle of a city during business hours no less) the other day. She nearly drove onto the side walk several times... which is extra impressive since there was a bicycle lane that w
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Just OMG... do you realize that instead of left and right, the driver of the vehicle would be responsible for managing yaw, pitch and roll?
I don't think putting the average person in control of a flying vehicle makes sense either, but you do realize that you can give them only limited control, right? Even hobbyist-level drones have that functionality. It's even a standard feature on foamies now.
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But you need to stop someone from flying their car into the sky, landing into someone elses garden, nicking their property (smartphones, watches) beside a swimming pool and then flying off again. There's enough grief and aggro with tour helicopters flying over other peoples gardens.
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This won't end well. (Score:2)
Hundreds of flying car headlights + Mothra [wikipedia.org] = disaster.
dashcam (Score:1)
can't wait to watch dashcam crash compilations on youtube
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Why would you need a dashcam? They will be crashing into personal property with security cameras, corporate property with security cameras, and public property with cameras. Some won't even be crashes but poor parking selection as well as privacy invasion. Complain about roads, buy at least it keeps most of the riffraff within specific areas. Flying cars pose a personal airspace disaster.
Now get off my lawn and out of my airspace.
What could possibly go wrong? (Score:2)
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Wait... that's a question for 3-10 years from now. I'll say it then when it becomes relevant... kinda like "What's a CD?"
They'd better ... (Score:2)
...bring them to the skies, because if they bring them to the seas, they have to call them submarines.
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Given that Japan is an island surrounded by ocean, I suspect a lot of their flying cars will end up submarines anyway.
Like the 5th generation AI project? (Score:2)
Noise noise noise from moving enough air (Score:1)
Other than lighter than air, I know of no way hold machines with people in them UP other than moving large quantities of air DOWN, which makes noise. You will never have "Jetsons" type personal flying car in your garage, unless you live in the country, because your neighbors won't tollerate the NOISE. That is the reason I invested in that anti gravity company ;-)
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I think that was in reference to a Ferrari making the popping sounds. I taught them that any machine that makes that much noise is only operated by assholes who don't mind driving something which is basically broken by design and can't operate within decent so
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I was really with you there for a while.. then I remembered Harley Davidson motorcycles... or even sports cars... I've taught my children that any machine that makes that much noise is poorly designed. Well designed machines don't make noise like that.
That's kind of true. Harleys are designed to make noise, not to be maximally efficient. However...
I think that was in reference to a Ferrari making the popping sounds. I taught them that any machine that makes that much noise is only operated by assholes who don't mind driving something which is basically broken by design and can't operate within decent sound limits.
No, that's totally different. That's actually just not spending money to make it quieter. Like all competitive automotive manufacturers, Ferrari tries to make efficient engines, because that means more power output. Harley doesn't have competition in the same way other manufacturers do, because they are selling an experience — not the best-possible machine, but the most stylish (for a particular style.)
This is a bad idea (Score:3)
Adding a 3rd will make it so much worse.
I rather not have one of those crash into me.
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And adding a 4th [youtube.com] just gives me a headache.
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You know what really scares me? (Score:2)
Soon, flying cars could crash on our homes.
That means we'll all have to live in underground shelters.
Holy crap, not Toyota! (Score:2)
Toyota can't even manage following its own internal coding practices, let alone industry standard best practices. I sure hope they don't transfer any technology.
Energy costs (Score:2)
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Why Uber??? (Score:1)