https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairey_Rotodyne https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9633v6U0wo
If you wanted to use this for commuting, just add a front electric sustainer to it. By the time the sustainer turns on, the aircraft is already pretty high altitude.
It'd be just as quiet as a land vehicle due to the greater distance away from the hearer.
but yeah, helicopters are likely to be fairly loud.
Sailplanes wouldn't work for commuting because of, in order:
1. Difficulty of training 2. Pilot liability for accidents 3. Weather 4. Space required to take off and land
My expert opinion - for limited delivery applications sailplanes could work. You need to do it right - sample and model atmosphere from the vehicle and ground, use gravity to accelerate and decelerate to flying speed, complete automation to remove the pilot. It's not easy. But it is not impossible.
(Incidentally, if someone is willing to drop me ~500k in an attempt to build a prototype - I might consider investing the time required.)
By talking sailplanes, I didn't mean unpowered flight. Of course you need power, to counteract drag . I was primarily referring to a form-factor (clean, efficient and and silent like a sailplane) and to a mode of takeoff and landing (convert speed to altitude with a wing, instead of eVTOL).
I'm merely pointing out one method that would allow near-elimination of noise.
...and you can fly a sailplane at a younger age (13 for solo flight) than you can drive (usually 16). And driving has most of those concerns as well.
Autonomous sailplane: - flies in 3D space with pitch, roll, yaw - has both MAX (Vne) and MIN (stall) speed, can't stop and wait - can't even stop descending (!) - HEAVILY influenced by wind and thermal conditions - pretty unstable, oscillates when upset - can not use ground as visual reference reliably - flying one is no joke even for a human, requires serious training
Good luck with your full autopilot.
What pilots usually do during emergency is to go through the checklist. There is not much room for improvisation.
Vehicles - it is a completely different level of problem. If you try to drive with dGPS alone, you will collide almost immediately. Even on the empty road, because dGPS is not good enough. And actually, it is almost AGI-complete problem, as you need to model and interact with other traffic participants.
While it doesn't completely negate your argument...
How about a solution for a VTOL craft, like the Boeing vehicle? How about an airship with high speed winches, with smaller drones managing the ends of the cables? The cables could attach to aircraft that want to take off, which would be pulled up to a height where their rotor noise wouldn't be so annoying.
That said, they were also nick named "flying coffins".
re: winch tow - when I was an Air Cadet in canada as a teen, we used to fly in schweizer 2-33's and occasionally went up on the winch - it was absolutely exhilarating!
...I've flown a 2-33. It's not much better than the Waco! :)
Unfortunately, I haven't flown it with a winch.