from the flying-cars-are-still-coming,-sort-of dept.
Volocopter's longer-range drone taxi completes its first test flights:
Volocopter's drone taxi is one step closer to entering service. The German firm has revealed that its four-seat electric VTOL aircraft, the VoloConnect, completed its first flight in May. The machine's initial trip was brief at two minutes and 14 seconds, but the maneuvers proved that the production-level aerodynamics and performance held up in real world conditions. There have been three flights so far.
The 60-mile range and 155MPH flight speed might not sound like much. However, they promise autonomous commuter flights beyond major urban centers — you could fly to a business meeting from the suburbs. The VoloConnect is effectively a companion to the VoloCity, a shorter-ranged eVTOL flier meant strictly for urban jaunts.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 08 2022, @02:31PM (5 children)
The article talks about flying from the suburbs to a downtown. From the pictures the space needed to take off and land looks to be equivalent to a helicopter. How many helopads are there? I think this is going to be a toy for the .01% to avoid traffic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 08 2022, @03:14PM
Looks like the same market and problems faced by California's Joby,
https://www.jobyaviation.com/ [jobyaviation.com]
Joby has been test flying for ~10 years now, I believe with pilots and also remote controlled.
As I've heard it, Joby's business model is to own everything and sell rides.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 08 2022, @03:35PM
And that will always be the case as you can't just expect every part of the city to be able to deal with the air coming off from the flying machine. Part of why heliports are located where they are is so that they don't blow the stuff around them away.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 08 2022, @04:40PM
The idea is to put helipads on the roofs of buildings. Air taxis trend towards the ultralight end of things so they don't need as much space or structural reinforcing as larger helicopters.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday June 08 2022, @05:54PM (1 child)
Leave it to SN to shit talk someone finally delivering us flying cars!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 08 2022, @07:45PM
Yeah well, when you hear the damn things buzzing overhead all day long, you'll be shit talking them too
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 08 2022, @03:24PM (1 child)
4 people? so like 4 x 90ish kilo? 360kg payload.
i hope it's electric.
it's cool that you can bring "stuff" to remote locations with no or bad roads. maybe even bring someone to hospital quickly.
i don't really see drones improving on helicopters unless:
1) smaller "airport" required. that is landing pad without obstructions can be smaller (for same or similar payload).
2) alot more maneuverable. upside down flight. when flown by computer and payload is non-human, accelerations in excess of 9G. imagine potato and diesel engine o-ring resupply to frigate off coast like a rocket, zig-zack, up down, left, right, only to land soft as a feather, dump cargo container and wooshing away ... with lots of Gs... that's prolly something a helicopter can't do?
but is guess it's just a expensive (tho comfortable) way to bring a authorised signing hand and/or chop wielder to some fancy deal making location. don't work harder, work more ... fanciful :P
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 08 2022, @11:54PM
Yes, it's electric.
Minimal landing pad requirements is core to the entire air taxi concept. The idea is to make them light enough that they can land on the roof of a building to pick up or drop off passengers.
They don't need to be more manoeuvrable or higher performance than conventional helicopters, just smaller, lighter, and cheaper to operate.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 08 2022, @04:08PM (1 child)
I love coming to the comments on these types of stories to see a bunch of nerds tell us how electric air taxis will never work. Probably direct descendants of the guys who said cars would never be popular with the masses or that computers were just a fad.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 08 2022, @05:34PM
They won't, they don't solve a problem that exists in most parts of the developed world. They may be somewhat useful in areas where the roads aren't as well-developed, but we're not still going to be using those in 200 years the way that we've been, and will continue to use, equivalents to horse-drawn carriages for millennia. Sure, we've updated them and replaced the horse with an ICE and likely will be replacing the ICE with battery, or hydrogen, powered motors, but the basic idea hasn't changed that much in millennia.
These air taxis really don't make much sense, as you do not want to have them flying above people with the kind of frequency that would be required to make sense. Areas with suffiicient population to have major traffic jams are not suitable locations for air taxis as they would definitely crash on top of people if they do have mechanical problems. Sure, they might well be useful going from the outskirts of town to a less populated area, but that use case is much less profitable. And likewise, it's going to be a long time before they can handle extreme weather, and they might never.
I do think that the technology will probably be somewhat useful for medical evacuations and during the period after a natural disaster before the roads are repaired, but I so no basis for assuming that this is better than what we've already got. And, with AI cars coming within the next few decades, even the traffic jams are probably not a good reason to consider this, you can just sit in the car and read a book, or engage in things like paying your bills or other chores that don't need to be done at home.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 08 2022, @04:29PM (1 child)
or id didn't happen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 08 2022, @07:39PM
Video, with ambient audio, not that stupid loud beat music. Everybody needs to hear just how loud these things will be
(Score: 2) by IndigoFreak on Wednesday June 08 2022, @04:57PM (4 children)
I always look at these taxi's and see death. How are drunk people not going to be cut up by the blades? Many people have lived a life of no dangers. They won't think about the hazards.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 08 2022, @05:40PM (2 children)
The thing is that these are never going to be useful in cities, just because any city with enough traffic where people would want to get away from the gridlock is so busy that there would be few places to crash that wouldn't be on top of other cars.
I do think there's some use for these in more rural areas, following natural disasters, places with no roads or for medical evacuation, but these are never going to be the normal method of getting around. And they really shouldn't be, all that up and down is much less energy efficient and safe than what we've already got. Especially as cars can be easily replaced with buses and both can be transitioned to batteries and fuel cells.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 08 2022, @07:50PM (1 child)
if fossil, especially the liquid type, runs out, nobody will want to be in a mega-city; the modern ones that where build around fossil (including coal) economy i mean.
the pre-fossil cities will prolly fair a bit better, especially if they have a river ...
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday June 09 2022, @10:38AM
Most of our private energy use other than transportation and heating is already electric; in some places, heating is mostly electric, too, and transportation is currently in the process of being converted to electric. Transport of electricity is far more efficient in cities, simply because the distances are smaller.
Note that with electricity as main energy transport, it doesn't really matter what is used to produce that electricity, as long as there is enough of it available. The energy may be produced by renewables, by nuclear power plants, and at some time in the future probably even using nuclear fusion (though that's still quite some time in the future). So unless you have evidence that there are not enough energy sources available in total to make up for the fossil fuels, there's no indication that cities will lose their attraction (at least not for their energy requirements).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 09 2022, @09:35AM
I want to die like my grandfather; sleeping peacefully. Not screaming in terror like his passengers.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by legont on Thursday June 09 2022, @02:26AM
Speed is all right, but the range is not. See, 155 mph with 60 miles range gives one less than half an hour airborne. Meantime flight regulations - which have dead pilots under each letter - require 30 minutes *reserve*. So, it has in fact negative range. This baby can't even take off in my book, period.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.