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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday January 12 2017, @05:04AM   Printer-friendly
from the not-the-fifth-element-flying-taxis dept.

The egg-shaped flying river taxi is gaining support, as SeaBubbles seeks to close its third funding round in under a year and aims to firm up interest from potential customers, including the city of Paris and companies in the San Francisco Bay.

To build the first battery-powered bubble-shaped ships that hover a few inches above the water and transport as many as six people at a time, founders Alain Thebault and Anders Bringdal last month raised 3.45 million euros ($3.6 million) from French insurer Maif and venture-capital fund Partech Ventures. 

[...] The river taxis rely on reducing the amount of drag on the water, thanks to a similar technique to the one that propelled Thebault and Bringdal's record-setting Hydroptere sailboat in the air.

The water taxis are mini-hydrofoils, which work great when the water is calm.


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by MostCynical on Thursday January 12 2017, @07:39AM

    by MostCynical (2589) on Thursday January 12 2017, @07:39AM (#452870) Journal

    I hope it performs better than previous boats made by M. Thebault - one tipped over, and then left abandoned in Hawaii.
    http://forums.sailinganarchy.com/index.php?showtopic=173293 [sailinganarchy.com]

    --
    "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 12 2017, @07:41AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 12 2017, @07:41AM (#452871)

      Failure is one of the steps on the road to success.

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 12 2017, @08:54AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 12 2017, @08:54AM (#452883)

        It's also one of the steps on the road to continued failure. I'm just sayin'

    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 12 2017, @12:42PM

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday January 12 2017, @12:42PM (#452922)

      I'd expect a few mishaps with experimental one-off prototype record breaking innovative unique designs.

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 12 2017, @09:33AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 12 2017, @09:33AM (#452889)

    I don't think you can go from the Seine to San Francisco with a river taxi. An ocean taxi, perhaps. :-)

  • (Score: 3, Funny) by wonkey_monkey on Thursday January 12 2017, @09:45AM

    by wonkey_monkey (279) on Thursday January 12 2017, @09:45AM (#452892) Homepage

    egg-shaped

    I'd hate to see the chicken those eggs came out of. Ouch.

    bubble-shaped

    That'd be a sphere.

    that hover

    Nope. That'd be a hovercraft. Clue's in the name.

    The water taxis are mini-hydrofoils, which work great when the water is calm.

    Don't they work better (less vomit inducing, anyway) than normal boats even when the water isn't calm?

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk
    • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday January 12 2017, @06:01PM

      by bob_super (1357) on Thursday January 12 2017, @06:01PM (#452993)

      > Don't they work better (less vomit inducing, anyway) than normal boats even when the water isn't calm?

      As long as the waves are shorter than the foils (plus margin). Beyond that, hilarious things happen.

      > Nope. That'd be a hovercraft. Clue's in the name.

      "hover..." needs to die for anything that's not actually hovering (heli/harrier/F35...).
      Hydrofoil is a cool enough name, ffs.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 13 2017, @01:10AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 13 2017, @01:10AM (#453137)

      Don't they work better (less vomit inducing, anyway) than normal boats even when the water isn't calm?

      Are you talking hydrofoils, or "mini-hydrofoils"? Because as bob_super says, their wave tolerance is related to the hydrofoil's physical dimensions. The water will need to be calmer for a mini-hydrofoil than a maxi-hydrofoil.