Aren't flying cars called, "helicopters"?<p>Perhaps a bit too snide, but helicopters can take off and land vertically and can carry roughly as many people as most passenger vehicles. And they're mature technology that has been around for over half a century at this point. The problem of moving people through the air without a runway for takeoff and landing has been solved for 60+ years.<p>What advantage does this flying car have over a helicopter? It's a quad rotor craft so presumably is mechanically simpler (no swashplate) but at the expense of lower speed and reduced ability to operate in the wind. Also it means a crash if any of the four rotors fail (no autorotation). It can also drive in the road like a car. But on the other hand it looks like it seats just one person, and in an open top vehicle so it'll be uncomfortable in the rain.<p>Helicopters are already supplemented by cars in most use cases. I don't really see the advantage of a flying car over flying a helicopter to the nearest heliport and driving in a car the rest of the way. The only real advantage is the fact that there is no vehicle change. But that comes at the expense of using a vehicle that makes major sacrifices to both fly and drive on roads.
Flying cars are interesting because they have the potential to partially make obsolete the natural monopoly of roads. Governments are heavily involved in natural monopolies (possibly for good reason) but I worry that that involvement may crowd out innovative private organizations that would otherwise have the incentive to bypass the natural monopoly. I wonder what other innovations are being stifled in the same way.<p>As far as flying cars go, they sure are loud. But cars are fairly noisy as well -- in cities the roads are often very close to apartment buildings.
The comments here are why we don’t have flying cars.<p>Everyone thinks of every possible negative. Instead of asking why not we should we asking what if. Maybe think of solutions along with the problems you find.
So, what is the attraction, exactly? It doesn't look as fast as a car or any more convenient, at least until cities are redesigned to accommodate these vehicles. I also assume that it is more energy-hungry than a car and I imagine that accidents are bound to be worse than cars for the foreseeable future.<p>Is it safer to pilot than an helicopter?
eHang is further along. [1] 16 rotors.<p>Battery energy density seems to be the big remaining problem. Flight times are too short.<p>[1] <a href="https://youtu.be/T_mezyLhvlA" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/T_mezyLhvlA</a>
Is it physically/technically possible to have quiet or silent rotors on drones? I can’t imagine flying cars as depicted in the article becomg a thing in cities if they sound like the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
I don't see how this could ever be feasible for consumers. People still struggle to drive when there are roads, what's going to happen when you add a third dimension to control?
I can't read the article, but if it leads to widespread adoption like the automobile was, I can see this being much worse for society than the car was. Some examples of the sort of things we can see:<p>- Suburbs times 100. Now, the suburbs would be even less accessible as they wouldn't even be connected by roads. Coincidentally, they could be anywhere, which would spread out utilities and make them even more inefficient as they are now due to sprawl.<p>- Much, much more expensive, both due to the complexity but due to insurance. Already cars are deadly and destructive, flying cars would lead to all sorts of accidents and property destruction given the difficulty of driving them especially by non-professionals. This too would probably be normalized like automobile destruction is but the actual cost will still exist and need to be subsidized by sky high insurance premiums<p>- Further destruction of cities. Now, like wide streets and highways that demolished neighborhoods (often black and immigrant communities), we'd see calls for destruction of tall buildings for "the sake of safety" due to the common place destruction discussed earlier. Streets and walkways like sidewalks today would fall into disrepair, trees and monuments would be cut down or removed for safety, and so on.<p>Then again, I don't think we'd get that far due to climate change, but this is just based on a historical understanding of what happened to the US since the 30's. I can see a much more atomized and disconnected society.