Jetson One – Personal Electric Aerial Vehicle

I found this [1] article when I started googling the people in the company, I thought this quite from their CTO Tomasz Patan was fun:<p><i>Vi vill inte att folk ska köpa vår produkt och krascha den direkt, så vi har sålt till välkända personer främst i USA som skulle få för mycket skit om de gjorde dumheter med den</i><p>which translates to (note: native Swedish speaker, but not a certified translator):<p><i>We don&#x27;t want people to buy our product and crash it straight away, so we have been selling to famous people mostly in the US, who would get too much crap if they fooled around with it&quot;</i><p>I enjoyed the directness of that statement. :)<p>Also learned from the same article:<p>- The maximum cargo weight including pilot is 100 kg, if you actually reach that then flying time is reduced to 12 minutes.<p>- The battery pack is charged externally, i.e. not in the vehicle, so you can have spares and swap.<p>- No mention of the battery pack&#x27;s weight, but I guess you would have to be quite a bit below those 100 kg in order to have room for another battery.<p>- New owners get a 2-day course (not a &quot;crash course&quot;, I guess :) at Jetson before being allowed to take their new vehicle home.<p>EDIT: Fixed italics for translated quote.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;teknikensvarld.se&#x2F;nyheter&#x2F;miljo-och-teknik&#x2F;jetson-one-flygande-farkost-for-formogna&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;teknikensvarld.se&#x2F;nyheter&#x2F;miljo-och-teknik&#x2F;jetson-on...</a>

It&#x27;s a nice toy, but the problems of personal aerial vehicles were not about electric motors vs ICE:<p>- Massive amount of sound pollution, current crop won&#x27;t be allowed near cities in significant numbers; that&#x27;s why the presentation videos are always silent.<p>- Exceptionally energy inefficient and limited speed, due to the way lift is achieved; it makes zero sense to spend 10 times the energy to travel at speeds comparable with what can achieved on the ground with the right infrastructure.<p>- Very limited safety guarantees, can&#x27;t be safely used by an untrained pilot, typically can&#x27;t be flow at all over populated areas etc.<p>Maybe they could reach for a market that can tolerate these drawbacks, ex. air ambulances, and build on that.

Lacks the safety features of airplanes (gliding) or helicopters (autorotation), has terrible rotor placement and small air time. I would advertise it as &quot;your personal death machine&quot;. :)<p>No amount of money would make me use that thing.<p>EDIT: Ok, sorry, it says it has a parachute, but I still would not use it.

I wonder why the rotors are positioned so low. Should a propeller get fractured, the splinters would hit the pilot&#x27;s chest and neck.<p>OTOH putting the propellers above would change the shape and thus the aesthetics seriously.

Maximum pilot weight of 210lbs? I suppose if I were rich enough to buy this I could also get myself a personal trainer.

Isn’t it crazy that Moller spent decades trying to get the basics of their flying car, only to give up inches from the finish line?<p>Tech has evolved so fast in the past few years that a brand new vehicle like this can go from design to production in a few years, and anyone can build a rough working prototype in their backyard.

Very cool, especially the demo video which eventually loaded.<p>Something on their website smells a little whiffy and bovine though:<p><i>”[our mission] is to change the way we travel and make the skies available for everyone”</i><p>Erm. Everyone? I don’t think so. Your mission is to give the 0.1% yet another way to be jerks, only this time with added noise!

There&#x27;s a whole crop of aerospace startups now wasting their time on electric airframes that are 10-20 years ahead of their time in terms of battery capability. It&#x27;s a classic case of solving the easy problem first.<p>Airframes are trivial. Getting battery energy density to a place that it becomes useful for personal aircraft is not. Yet that is the singular enabling technology to make this stuff a reality.

I was about to leave a snarky &quot;glide ratio = 0&quot; comment until I saw the note about the ballistic parachute. Wish they included the effective altitude though. I assume it would be effective from a lower altitude than the Cirrus, as this thing weighs only ~400 lbs with a human in it.

EHang has a vehicle like that.[1] There are a few other quadcopters big enough to carry a human. So far no real products, but some nice demos.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ehang.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ehang.com&#x2F;</a>

Almost looks like a ground-effect vehicle. Doesn’t go too high; which may not really be an issue. Just high enough, so tarmac isn’t necessary.<p>I seem to recall a discussion on HN, where it was explained that quadcopters don’t scale up too well. I don’t remember the reasoning.<p>The one thing that concerns me about commodity-level flying vehicles, is the way people drive the ones that are stuck on the ground. I would want autonomous vehicles to be devloped and refined, before flying ones.

With a 20 minute flight time (and is that with any safety margin remaining? Doesn’t say.) at ~60mph I can only make a 10 mile round trip. 20 miles of each landing spot has a charger (and I doubt there’s weight budget to carry a decent charger with me).<p>It’s a very cool kit for hobbyists but there are very few missions this can fly with utility.

I guess when the pilot falls out they will be called &quot;The Jetisoned One&quot; ;-)

If you&#x27;re interested in the components, looks like both motors and propellers are from <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mad-motor.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mad-motor.com</a><p>It&#x27;s quite hard to find high quality electric drive components in this size – too big for drones, too small for full scale airplanes. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;store.tmotor.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;store.tmotor.com&#x2F;</a> is another alternative.

I never understood why startups are so infatuated with quadcopter designs. Just design a small electric gyro-copter and you&#x27;ll get 10X range and half the complexity.

&gt; A complete vehicle is 92 000 USD and is delivered to you as a partially (50%) assembled kit for home completion. It contains everything you need, from the aluminium space frame to motor controllers, propellers and motors. You will also receive detailed build instructions.<p>Seems odd to not deliver a fully assembled aircraft. Is there any regulatory reason? If cost is an issue, they could probably charge extra (such as $110K total) and deliver it fully assembled.

If you&#x27;re rich enough for this vehicle, it might be better to rent or buy a single engine plane instead. Yes, you gotta get a license but honestly after you get past the basics you&#x27;ll probably fly better than Harrison Ford with little issue. I assume the real costs are going to be the hanger rental, insurance, and maintenance.

Doesn&#x27;t matter until there&#x27;s a breakthrough with battery energy density. Any electric VTOL aircraft capable of carrying humans is limited to less than 50 miles range.

Here&#x27;s a direct link to the flight demo video. Looks like fun but it only reaches a maximum altitude of about 4 m. Basically it&#x27;s operating more like a hovercraft than an aircraft.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;FzhREYOK0oo" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;FzhREYOK0oo</a>

Budget version: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=SabzZ5UOC-c" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=SabzZ5UOC-c</a>

Another Personal Electric Aerial Vehicle which looks promising: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.volocopter.com&#x2F;solutions&#x2F;volocity&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.volocopter.com&#x2F;solutions&#x2F;volocity&#x2F;</a>

This is an amazing outcome! Three cheers to the founders and the team working on this project&#x2F;company. As with most tech, it does seem like a Pandora&#x27;s Box in terms of outcomes. Especially regulatory&#x2F;safety issues.<p>I come from India, where median folks have a complete and utter disregard for traffic rules and safety regulations. I can&#x27;t begin to think how we would adopt a technology like this. I mean, how would we start, how would traffic merge? Can we restrict&#x2F;regulate the flow of vehicles in thin air?<p>The fact that this is a tech+social problem interests me even more.

I swear I saw something like this in some kids magazine 30 years ago. It was supposedly powered by a vacuum motor. I now understand that can’t possibly work, but for many years I thought it could. I’d love it if someone else knew what I’m talking about and could send me a link to the magazine article. I assume it wasn’t trying to be a joke, this was a relatively serious kids magazine, but maybe I’ve been wrong.

We have gained so much in terms of technological progress, consistently reducing the energy required to go from point A to point B, it surprises me how we are again increasing it for getting from point A to point B.<p>The concept is great, but the push for mass market adoption bugs me.<p>These things are not efficient modes of transport. It takes a lot of energy to move one person from A to B.

Before I left California I actually looked into personal transport, only half ironically. The real estate costs are so nuts it would be cheaper to get a house inland across the mountains (Southern California) and buy a personal aircraft to commute.<p>Telecommuting is better.

Reminds me a lot of the Martin Jetpack, which received tonnes of media hype when it was first unveiled at Oshkosh 2008, and despite being &quot;almost ready&quot; for the next decade, nothing was ever built and the company went bust.<p>Incidentally, the remaining assets (including intellectual property) were just put up for auction a few days ago [1].<p>The market for what&#x27;s essentially an aerial jetski has always been small, and now due to the drone renaissance it&#x27;s basically non-existent.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.skylarc.co.nz&#x2F;tenders&#x2F;martin-jetpack&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.skylarc.co.nz&#x2F;tenders&#x2F;martin-jetpack&#x2F;</a>

Looks like a fantastic way to give bystanders a very efficient haircut

I am 6&#x27;3&quot; tall and have the body of a programmer who also lifts weights. That means Ive got some body fat and some muscle mass and I weigh too much for this vehicle. Im not obese though. 210 lbs max weight is going to cut out a large percentage of the folks who could afford one- Athletes. I get this is Rev 1, but there isnt much flight time here and you have to be a small to medium sized person to fly it.

Feels like going back full circle to 1903 and using a propeller to fly :)<p>I am incredibly excited about the prospect of small flying machines. I also can not imagine that propellers will be where this ends although there are limitations with using electric energy.<p>There are quite a few concepts flying around these days:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=-sUqJ9bId70" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=-sUqJ9bId70</a>

It seems that an electric hovercraft like this one <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hoverstream.com&#x2F;hovercraft&#x2F;marlin-xl&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hoverstream.com&#x2F;hovercraft&#x2F;marlin-xl&#x2F;</a> would be a lot more viable - easier to drive, more efficient, 2&#x2F;3 seats instead of 1

A complete vehicle is 92 000 USD and is delivered to you as a partially (50%) assembled kit for home completion...

Really impressed a swedish company has gone and done this.<p>We asked for the flying car, YC has not given it to us.

If this had a FPV &#x2F; drone mode, looks like it&#x27;d be ideal to rescue those dogs on La Palma.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=28920693" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=28920693</a>

Haven&#x27;t these been around in China for 5+ years? I&#x27;m also a bit skeptical about the 1 item per month build rate... that seems a bit slow to me. Then again, I&#x27;m just the armchair critic here...

They should add on crush core legs to handle falls lower than parachutable.

So, the drone footage used to capture this video makes me wonder: - Is the camera drone VERY fast? - Or is the Jetson slow? - Is this realtime footage or accelerated somehow?

For the plebs among us <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=EQK9m_OBVgY" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=EQK9m_OBVgY</a>

Don&#x27;t think I&#x27;d drop $90k based on a spec sheet like that. I assume all this is at sea level? What if I live in Denver?

Looks hella fun! Imagine the noise though, you&#x27;ll get tinnitus riding that thing all day.

Gonna have a hell of a time convincing my office to let me land one of these on the roof…

Can it be controlled remotely? A drone capable of moving 90kg of cargo ought to be useful to somebody, maybe Spanish drug smugglers[0] ;)<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=27904396" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=27904396</a>

&gt; Start and Land anywhere you want. Make your garden or terrace your private airport<p>I assume this is wildly illegal in most jurisdictions?

These things have absolutely no viability unless they&#x27;re quiet

You guys have more of a product than most 1b+ SPACs<p>Time to go public haha

I guess if you really want to know how you&#x27;ll die.

20 minute flight time? Useless.

How noisy is it going to be?

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=FzhREYOK0oo" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=FzhREYOK0oo</a>

From the video, it looks like this craft is limited to about 10 feet in altitude (certainly as high as I’d want to go, but I imagine their primary market at first is going to be thrill-seekers). And yet that’s really all you need for a lot of point-to-point transport, especially in rural areas (which I also imagine will be the only legal places to fly these for the foreseeable future).