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Flying River Taxis Eye Customers From the Seine to San Francisco

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

Phoenix666 writes:

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, 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?

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  • (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.