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Uber Aims to Make its Flying Car Service Cheaper Than Ground Car Ownership
At Uber's Elevate conference, the company revealed some price targets for its upcoming vertical takeoff and landing flying taxi service:
The passenger cost per mile, [Uber Head of Elevate Eric] Allison said, needs to be competitive with the variable cost of car ownership. Car ownership, on a per mile basis, costs between $0.464 to $0.608, according to AAA.
However, uberAIR will not be cheaper on a cost per passenger mile at launch. Initially, uberAIR will cost $5.73 per passenger mile. In the near-term, Uber says it will get the cost down to $1.86 per passenger mile before ideally getting to $0.44 per passenger mile. At that point, it would actually be cheaper to use uberAIR.
uberAIR is scheduled to begin testing in 2020, with the first official passenger trip in 2023.
Additionally, Uber will collaborate with NASA and the U.S. Army on its uberAIR plans:
Under the agreement, Uber will provide NASA with details and data on its plans for a flying taxi service, which the agency will use to simulate flights over Dallas-Fort Worth. This data will address scenarios involving air traffic, collision mitigation, and air space management. It is NASA's first such agreement related to urban air mobility (UAM) specifically focused on modeling and simulation.
[...] Uber also signed an agreement with the US Army to develop and test "flying taxi" aircraft for the company's mobility service. The company will jointly develop and fund research into rotor technology with the US Army's corporate research lab.
Previously: Uber Lays Out Vision for Flying Commuter Transit
Uber Hires Veteran NASA Engineer to Develop Flying Cars
Related: An Idea That Just Might Take Off
(Score: 4, Insightful) by frojack on Thursday May 10 2018, @05:19PM (1 child)
And helicopter transport is so popular it has sprung up in hundreds of cities across the nation... Oh, wait.
Even the NYC operations are scheduled flights. I don't think anybody is doing on-demand.
But lets assume it magically appeared, and you could hail an Uber from any of a few dozen places (saying nothing about anyone's front yard or rooftop). They will instantly find this doesn't scale. You can't dump dozens of aircraft, even those that stay below some arbitrary altitude, into a smallish area and expect it to go well.
The flying taxi world of The Fifth Element is not coming to a city near you.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday May 10 2018, @08:30PM
Well, the special sauce of NYC is NYC is old and has weird geographical constraints such that its painful to go from the cool places to the airport and the cool places are ridiculously rich. I don't see it selling, well, pretty much anywhere else. Maybe the Wash DC area would LIKE it but I don't think the national monument SAM sites would respond well.
It would be an epic battle to watch, as drivers know you can tell the local speed ticket revenue generators and taxi medallion rent seekers to stick it, and get away with it, at least for a little while, but WRT aviation you can't randomly fly planes around buildings in NYC without immediate F-16 or F-22 response and merely slightly delayed FAA response. Uber fake taxis could run for months before legal speed bumps, helo service will probably make it about one flight, maybe less.
It looks like NYC helo service is ridiculously profitable if you don't look at the details, but the restriction on supply is the limited number of heliports and some FAA hand wavery such that merely making an app and telling the local licensing authorities to suck it might have worked great for making taxis that aren't regulated like taxis, but its not gonna fly (get the pun, fly?) with helo service.
I don't really get the point of "uber is small scale" because the NYC services I'm aware of use 4-seater choppers not CH-47 that would be analogous to a chartered bus, so helo service is already small.