Unlike cars, these machines would not be tightly packed into roads, concentrating the noise and pollution; likely they'd have to keep a serious distance.

Also, with a top speed of 70 mph and range of 70 miles, it does not look like a great daily-commuter vehicle. This device looks like a good fit for an expensive urban fast-jump service, or a good solution for places where roads are hard to build, like going to a forest hike or a mountain trip.

If you're outside 70 miles, you've got bigger problems. But considering that rush-hour traffic can bring average freeway speeds down to the 5 and 10 MPH range, I'd say this would be a huge improvement for daily commuting. At great expense of course.

The only thing is, something invented for a niche market on Sunday will be made much cheaper on Monday, will be widespread and causing mayhem by Tuesday, regulated to the hilt on Wednesday, the sole domain of big corporations by Thursday, and used for aerial assassinations at-will by the military by Friday.

(My little sequence there takes a cue from this talk, posted on HN yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16106331 )

70 miles one way, so it's likely 35 miles round-trip after which you're dry.

Winged aircraft is so much more economical, but it's necessarily large.

Curses, foiled by the old "one way/round trip" trick!

I think there are a lot of places (SF, Los Angeles) where if you could travel 25 miles at a consistent 50 MPH speed that would be a huge improvement over many people's commute. It would be great for my commute personally. I can see reasons why this would not work as a commuter vehicle, but speed and range don't seem to be the issue.

70 miles by air is a long distance. You really want ~1 hour of reserve in an aircraft, but it said 70 miles per tank so you might have 70 miles with a 70 mile reserve.

Remember weight is the real limit. So, having a single passenger frees up ~150 lb for extra fuel.