There is a business use case here in NYC. NYC to the Hamptons or out east long Island. The locals in the Hamptons are complaining about noise pollution from helicopters making trips to the Hamptons from NYC. If this makes little or no noise the current helicopter service companies will use them and people will pay $800 ( off-peak) - $2,500 ( peak) one way trip from the west side of manhattan / Chelsea area to east Hampton / Montauk . If you got the money that is :-)
I’m really surprised by the noise levels. They say 65db flyover and 70db landing which is quieter than just about every (personal) drone [1].<p>I wonder how they’re getting those numbers. Like at what distance are they measuring from?<p>I find it hard to believe they’re able to make a flying vehicle quieter than a drone 1/100th of its size.<p>Edited for clarity<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.airbornedrones.co/drone-noise-levels/" rel="nofollow">https://www.airbornedrones.co/drone-noise-levels/</a>
As much as I want to live in a world with the Jetsons, what's the business case here? Presumably it's going to have to launch vertically from the top of buildings, which means that you can go from skyscraper landing pad to skyscraper landing pad. How many taxi users are trying to travel within a financial district? I imagine much more commonly they're trying to go from high-density to low-density (like FiDi to West Village) which this operating model could only support if you build a serious amount of elevated architecture.<p>Not to mention having to pay for insurance premiums of a miniaturized airplane that is zipping around a heavily inhabited urban area.
The VTOL concept for air taxis is silly; this is just a 3d rendering for a press release, and battery energy density just isn't there yet for them to be useful.<p>But electric flight is without a doubt going to revolutionize commuter airlines. With an electric powertrain, you get rid of the vast majority of costs associated with flying which are the intensive maintenance and overhaul schedules required for turboprop/turbofan engines. You can then economically fly small traditional aircraft with electric powertrains carrying ~10 passengers up to 250 miles at 200mph with current battery tech, and takeoff/land from tiny municipal airports with no need for TSA. At that point flying becomes like hopping on a bus, and just as cheap. Living within 250 miles of a metro area and commuting every day will be a nonissue. Something like the Eviation Alice [0] is far more likely to be the future than any of these VTOL concepts.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.eviation.co/" rel="nofollow">https://www.eviation.co/</a>
In related news, Brazilian GOL Airlines just pre-ordered 250 eVTOL from Vertical Aerospaces for a 2025 delivery. So I think the market is heated-up right now.<p><a href="https://worldairlinenews.com/2021/09/21/gol-to-launch-a-network-of-250-evtol-aircraft-in-brazil/" rel="nofollow">https://worldairlinenews.com/2021/09/21/gol-to-launch-a-netw...</a><p>Brazil, and specially São Paulo, is a huge market for helicopters and air-taxi services in general, not to speak of regional air services, for which the VA-X4 aircraft is somewhat constrained with a mere 160km range.
Can I have 30? I need to get to my hyperloop pod faster.<p>Those modern transportation 'solutions' are a sign of local maxima of current city design. A bad design that cannot scale any further.<p>So maybe instead we start on fixing cities?
I wonder how much of this is in response to what Archer Aviation are doing with their Maker aircraft? It looks very similar in specs.<p><a href="https://www.archer.com/maker" rel="nofollow">https://www.archer.com/maker</a>
> Zero emission flights<p>The same lies that are peddled to us about pretty much everything. The emissions are just moved downstream, and could even be worse in certain places, as compared to other transportation systems. I am curious to see how they fare in energy usage as compared to an electric car, electric bikes and electric trains.