Joby Aviation's First Production Air Taxi Cleared For Flight Tests (engadget.com) 25
Joby Aviation has been cleared by the FAA to start flight tests on its first production prototype air taxi, the company wrote in a press release. Engadget reports: It's a large step in the company's aim to start shipping the eVTOL aircraft (electric vertical takeoff and landing) to customers in 2024 and launch an air taxi service by 2025. The aircraft can take off and land like a helicopter, then tilt its six rotors horizontally and fly like an airplane at up to 200 MPH. It's designed to carry a pilot and four passengers over a distance up to 100 miles on a charge -- enough range for most types of air taxi operations. At the same time, Joby claims it's nearly silent in cruise mode and 100 times quieter than conventional aircraft during takeoff and landing.
With the the FAA's special airworthiness certificate in hand, Joby can perform flight tests of full production aircraft, following tests with full-scale prototypes that began in 2017. In May last year, the company received another crucial permit, the FAA's Part 135 air carrier certificate for commercial operations. It recently teamed with Delta Air Lines to offer travel to and from airports, and its website shows a scenario of flying from downtown NYC to JFK airport in just seven minutes compared to 49 minutes in a car.
Now, Joby must clear the largest hurdle with full FAA type and production certification in order to take paying passengers on commercial flights. That's likely about 18 months away, aerospace engineer and Vertical Flight Society director Mike Hirschberg told New Scientist. Its first customer would be the US Air Force, as part of a $131 million contract under the military's Agility Prime program, with deliveries set for 2024.
With the the FAA's special airworthiness certificate in hand, Joby can perform flight tests of full production aircraft, following tests with full-scale prototypes that began in 2017. In May last year, the company received another crucial permit, the FAA's Part 135 air carrier certificate for commercial operations. It recently teamed with Delta Air Lines to offer travel to and from airports, and its website shows a scenario of flying from downtown NYC to JFK airport in just seven minutes compared to 49 minutes in a car.
Now, Joby must clear the largest hurdle with full FAA type and production certification in order to take paying passengers on commercial flights. That's likely about 18 months away, aerospace engineer and Vertical Flight Society director Mike Hirschberg told New Scientist. Its first customer would be the US Air Force, as part of a $131 million contract under the military's Agility Prime program, with deliveries set for 2024.
Have they no Scottish employees? (Score:4, Funny)
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Jobby
Still a helicopter is much cooler (Score:2)
A powerfull gas turbine with internal temperatures reaching 3200F, rotating a shaft at 15000rpm to lift us 13 miles into the air.
I don't see it (Score:1)
I wouldn't want something like this flying over my house. The noise will be horrible and there will always be a risk one of them crashing in the house.
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They are unlikely to become nuisance, since they are expensive and require significant skill and training to operate, which makes them rare enough.
This thing, in contrast, aims to become a popular mode of transportation in urban areas.
gimmick (Score:3)
It's a short-range helicopter; the only interesting thing is that it's electric. A bunch of companies are working on these.
The real capabilities and specs remain to be seen. One version is supposedly 4 passengers for 150 miles at 200 MPH. They have built one prototype, which they are now authorized to flight-test. Testing will take about 18 months, and we'll see how that goes.
There are a zillion things that are required for passenger aircraft certification, and it will cost about a zillion dollars to do. For some reason, there is money behind this for these companies
The main thing I am curious about, like everyone, is the failure modes. The most benign thing in a regular helicopter is a simple engine failure: in which case you auto-rotate (a very steep immediate glide) to the ground. Those are no big deals and I performed one in my first hour of helicopter flight training. But there are lots of other things that can happen, in regular operation or if there are more catastrophic failures. And though I consider them to be "very safe", helicopters crash and burn all the time. Since this new kind of vehicle is intended for intra-urban commuting, the safety issues will be very interesting.
If the battery capacity and performance is what they hope, I guess they could run about 4-5 one-way trips a day.
The going rate for a regular helicopter ride from downtown Manhattan to Newark Airport, which is the kind of 5-minute trip we're talking about here, is just under $2,000 total.
The cost for this electric ride would be infinitely higher, given the unknown maintenance cost and the need to recoup development. Presumably over years, they could get it down to the regular helicopter cost. So the pricing will be totally artificial for a long time. Therefore, if they get this thing approved and start operating it, I would expect the price to be competitive.
However, calling it a "ride share" is silly. The only thing it will have in common with Uber is that I suppose there will be a phone app by which you can schedule a ride.
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>It's a short-range helicopter;
With multiple short rotors, it's not a helicopter.
It's a lot easier to have stability control systems so you don't require a highly skilled pilot to operate it (still a skilled one, please... I don't trust the computers to handle edge cases). It can survive the loss of some rotors and still manage a safe powered landing. Mechanically, it's simpler and thus less likely to fail and less costly to maintain.
It is a helicopter-substitute, not a helicopter.
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And so what happens when the battery catches fire mid-flight whilst zipping over the urban landscape?
Yes, the current generation of lithium-ion batteries do have a propensity to self-ignite, especially when pushed hard as they will be in any eVTOL craft such as these.
After the first fireball falls onto a busy city street or building I think there will suddenly be huge restrictions as to where these things can fly (once they *actually* become commercially viable) and that will cripple the concept of aerial u
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Doesn't happen often enough to be a news item... and I kind of have this feeling that the early human-carrying drones are going to have some faults.
Having said that, I'd rather be in a failing drone than a helicopter. Even when the battery pack starts to burn, there should be enough time for an emergency landing, and we're already handling burning LiON in cars, so one coming down from the sky is just a different delivery mode for the burning material.
But an auto-rotating helicopter? I know that's a thing,
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>It's a short-range helicopter;
With multiple short rotors, it's not a helicopter.
It's a lot easier to have stability control systems so you don't require a highly skilled pilot to operate it (still a skilled one, please... I don't trust the computers to handle edge cases). It can survive the loss of some rotors and still manage a safe powered landing. Mechanically, it's simpler and thus less likely to fail and less costly to maintain.
It is a helicopter-substitute, not a helicopter.
So it's a Chinese-made DJI drone?
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It's a short-range helicopter; the only interesting thing is that it's electric. A bunch of companies are working on these.
No, it's a tiltrotor aircraft, more like a V-22 Osprey. It uses wings for lift in horizontal flight.
The real capabilities and specs remain to be seen. One version is supposedly 4 passengers for 150 miles at 200 MPH. They have built one prototype, which they are now authorized to flight-test.
No, this is the first unit of the production line. The press release states: "Joby has been flying full size aircraft since 2017 and its pre-production prototype aircraft have flown more than 30,000 miles since 2019."
The main thing I am curious about, like everyone, is the failure modes. The most benign thing in a regular helicopter is a simple engine failure: in which case you auto-rotate (a very steep immediate glide) to the ground.
I'm interested in the failure modes too, but since it's a tiltrotor a power failure in horizontal flight should still allow for a glide, as long as the "fly by wire" controls still work.
If the battery capacity and performance is what they hope, I guess they could run about 4-5 one-way trips a day.
You're m
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The going rate for a regular helicopter ride from downtown Manhattan to Newark Airport, which is the kind of 5-minute trip we're talking about here, is just under $2,000 total.
Blade [blade.com] charge $195 a seat in five-seat Bell 407, so probably half that.
!
When I booked that flight this morning, Blade quoted me a price of more than $1,800. That's where I got the number. (I cancelled the order before it charged my card.)
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You're making some assumption there about the time it takes to recharge, as well as the length of the flights. You can get 80% capacity into an electric car in 25 mins these days, with high voltage DC charging, so I don't see why you couldn't do really quite a lot of "air taxi" runs in a day.
And how many charge-cycles will you get out of a battery that's constantly fast-charged in this way?
Answer: not many. In fact most EV manufacturers warn against constantly fast-charging or charging to more than 80% on a regular basis because this significantly shortens battery life. And yes, to be practical, an aircraft's batteries will have to be charged to 100 percent because otherwise a heavier/bigger battery would be needed -- the problems with that are described below.
GIven that the batteries in an
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+ 4 informative
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Yeah, that was interesting. I wonder what the diagrams for the hovercraft would look like. I presume they can fly reasonably well without one rotor, but losing two rotors would be a problem.
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So many shirts are going to be lost before air-taxis become "a thing".
Electricity is a very poor cousin of fossil fuels when it comes to aviation for a host of reasons and we're still a generation of battery tech away from it being commercially viable.
It seems that investors are being duped by the "wow factor" and not doing their due dilligence on these things.
Key factors making these things an economic impossibility are:
1. very slow refueling (ie: recharging) times compared to fossil fuels.
2. unlike EVs th
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All those blades look ominous (Score:3)
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"Alef 'Model A' is a Low Speed Vehicle (LSV) [alef.aero] which has legal speed and other limitations in most states. The assumption is that, if a driver needs a faster route, a driver will use Alef’s flight capabilities."
"Low speed" meaning no more than 25 miles per hour. It also looks impossible to clean, but I suppose someone who can afford $300,000 (US) for a toy car can probably also afford to hire a crowd of low-wage workers to scrub out all the little holes with toothbrushes.
Yes! (Score:1)
Sounds really cool. (Score:1)