Flying cars: will they ever take off?
The flying car has been part of the popular imagination for many decades, and has even been seen by some as the paradigm of technological deception (Peter Thiel’s “we wanted flying cars and instead they gave us 140 characters”) and has slowly been moving from fantasy toward attracting the attention of idealistic investors or millionaires determined to see it become a reality, with little success so far.
However, there are signs of progress, and when I see that type of signals, I like to write an article about it, even if it is just to save and categorize some links about it, so here we go.
A lengthy Bloomberg Business Week article entitled “Welcome to Larry Page’s secret flying-car factories” details the history of the so-called Vertical Take Off and Landing (VTOL) for civilian use that mentions the Moller Skycar I wrote about in Spanish in 2005, the Terrafugia prototypes I have been hearing about since 2007 (link in Spanish), and on to the recent Airbus announcement that it will launch an autonomous flying taxi at the end of this year. The article, as the title indicates, charts the adventures of Google co-founder Larry Page in this area, using his own money, in facilities close to Google’s headquarters and working pretty much in secret with companies such as Zee.Aero or Kitty Hawk, in what sounds like a bid to ruin himself financially. Except we’re talking about Larry Page here.
In addition to initiatives of this type, there are some issues that seem to point to further development. According to a 97-page report developed by Uber in the wake of its Uber Elevate initiative, the development of VTOLs depends on the advancement of certification systems and control systems for flying artifacts, the development of electric motors and battery technology to keep emissions low, advancement in variables such as efficiency, performance and reliability, deployment of infrastructure for landings and take-offs, shorter training time for pilots using autonomous systems or advanced flight assistance, and of course, central issues such as cost or security. According to the report, Uber aims to be providing air transport services in cities by 2026.
This is little more than speculation about a platform — an important word, because that is the model Uber has always used — for a system of relatively low-cost air transport. The company has since announced it is hiring Mark Moore, a NASA aeronautical engineer who authored a 2015 report on the possibilities of adopting VTOL for civilian use in Silicon Valley, looking at the requirements vehicles of this type would require to be viable.
The idea of a platform is important because it is the best way to take VTOL from the transport for multimillionaires willing to acquire their own vehicle to the possibility of rapid urban transport at prices that could attract broader demand based on high occupation. Obviously, as with the future of self-driving cars, nothing prevents the rich from buying their own vehicles, as is the case with private jets today, but operating costs and a clearly suboptimal level of use would act as disincentives.
The future of flying cars might depend on a company like Airbus working with disruptive startups in the context of a platform requiring reasonably priced vehicles: that is starting to sound like something that might just get off the ground.
(En español, aquí)
