The Flying Car Is Dead | Hacker News Reader

The Flying Car Is Dead

roadandtrack.com

11 pointsgnabgib10 comments

Don’t think it is dumb at all. If these flying cars can get rid of roads it would be a win for humans and animals. I hate roads. Imagine a world without roads and everyone transports by air. The space it could freed could be used for bigger housing and more land for nature. There would be no need for waiting for semaphores as well.

They were always a bad idea. They only make sense in a world with limitless energy, even if every other design hurdle was cleared.

I want to believe that hoverboards are a lower bar we could achieve.

But is hovering 1 ft above the ground any less difficult than hovering 500 ft above the ground?

Hovering, no, but thanks to ground effect flying is.

This doesn't help as much as people might think though, the requirement to be constantly moving relatively quickly or fall is not helpful at high traffic volumes at ten foot or under clear of the ground.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBevTYD0uOI

Flying cars are dead because we need less flying and fewer cars, not more cars but flying. We need better public transport and safer walking and cycling infrastructure. That will also make it safer and less stressful to drive for those who have to.

But this thing is actually really efficient.

It only has an 8 kWh battery and still has a usable range of 32 km. It's efficient even for overland flight, but it can also take a much shorter path.

So, in Stockholm where we have lots of islands a trip from Bergshamra to Vaxholm is 16 km by air, 27 km by car (if you were allowed to take off from Bergshamra, which I fear one may not, since I think it's part of the airspace allocated to Bromma Airport).

This is probably better than a car, energy-use wise, at least in places where ground transport is constrained.

The limited time in hover until overheating is seriously unfun though, but I think that's solvable.

Some videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqzQJNoNGmo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0t4EWBaR3EY&t=86s

Imagine if they said this about airplanes? They were not safe too. But some rando journalist can never predict future. it's dead for year or too but tech advances.

They did say that about airplanes, but via pretty strict regulation, and consequently high costs we've kept the average idiot away from airplanes so they can't turn them in to cruise missiles.

With flying cars the only way they can be safe for the masses on the ground is to take away every bit of freedom from doing anything with them at all, and putting such strict liability on them that most people wouldn't want to touch them anyway.

Or to paraphrase Mass Effect

>That means, Sir Isacc Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-bitch anywhere.

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