The High-Stakes Race to Build the World’s First Flying Taxi

Re:The High-Stakes Race to Build the World’s First Flying Taxi by Robotbeat on Tuesday November 05, 2019 @05:20PM (#21457394)

VTOL share most of those advantages of winged aircraft. The reason eVTOL may well be cheaper is that they have a lot fewer moving parts than a helicopter (and much lower vibration, plus using cheaper, lower-maintenance electric motors instead of turbine engines) and much less (and cheaper) fuel. But it'll take good designs. The Lilium one seems non-optimal compared to the Heaviside.

And don't rule out eSTOL. I think we'll see more of that.

Helicopters have an operating cost per hour an order of magnitude higher than a comparable payload conventional aircraft. The purchase price per payload capacity is also nearly an order of magnitude different. It's not the operator cost that determines the difference in price between helicopters and CTOL.

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Re:The High-Stakes Race to Build the World’s First Flying Taxi by Retric on Wednesday November 06, 2019 @08:09AM (#21462114)

Helicopters are VTOL, I don’t know what you think it means but it’s just ‘Vertical Take-Off and Landing”. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VTOL “This classification can include a variety of types of aircraft including fixed-wing aircraft as well as helicopters and other aircraft with powered rotors, such as cyclogyros/cyclocopters and tiltrotors.”

Similarly, an electric helicopter would qualify as eVTOL. People generally aim for something more efficient in flight, but that’s a separate question.

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Re:The High-Stakes Race to Build the World’s First Flying Taxi by Robotbeat on Wednesday November 06, 2019 @09:18AM (#21462783)

You’re right. I meant VTOL with wingborne cruise, like the V-22.

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Re:The High-Stakes Race to Build the World’s First Flying Taxi by starpilot on Tuesday November 05, 2019 @06:06PM (#21457788)

It's hard to claim they're cheaper when they have a fraction of the range of gas helicopters. It's apples to oranges, the flying cars now are equivalent to electric golf carts in performance.

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Re:The High-Stakes Race to Build the World’s First Flying Taxi by woodandsteel on Tuesday November 05, 2019 @07:22PM (#21458478)

For those cases where their range is sufficient, they are vastly cheaper. And their range is going to increase over the years as batteries improve.

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