Some of you may remember the animated TV show The Jetsons about a family that lived in the future that had all manner of anticipated technological advances. One of them was the flying personal car and that particular item has become a punch line whenever people want to express disappointment that we do not have many of the amazing things that we thought had been promised to us in the dreams of science fiction writers.
No longer. It turns out that a company in China called Ehang is testing a large drone that can carry a single passenger. They are not the only company to be developing such things but seem to be the leader.
Here is a video they have released of a test flight.
What worries me are the exposed rotors that look like they could easily slice through any living thing. I don’t know why the rotors are not surrounded by coaxial cylindrical casings that would still be able to provide thrust along the axis directions. There may be technical reasons that I am not aware of.
I assume, on a prototype, simplicity and weight saving.
Flying cars are an essentially stupid idea for the intrusion and danger they impose on other people.
Well -- it’s kind of cool, but it is basically a helicopter. Any rotor aircraft is going to be dangerous -- in this case, I would expect you to need a private pilot license to fly it in the US -- and in some of the weather conditions shown, an instrument rating as well.
Evidently these are electric -- so I wonder what range and payload are.
@fentex, No. 1: I agree, weight is most likely the issue.
@felicis, No. 2: Despite all the obsessive head ducking, the dangers of rotary-wing air craft are quite different from the horizontal propeller systems used on drones, especially when, as in this case, the propellers are at ground level.
Jeff
I believe they are supposed to be autonomous, so no pilot training required. They are more of a flying taxi than a flying personal car.
http://www.ehang.com/ehang184
I don’t know if I’d call this a ‘flying car’ either, remarkable as it is. This is more an iteration of the single seater helicopter, something that has been around since the 50s certainly, and possibly the 40s.
A tunnel around a rotor improves its efficiency, because it prevents air escaping around the tips of the blades. Therefore extra weight shouldn’t be an issue. Maybe production cost is.
@ 6 Lassi Hippeläinen
If these are prototypes, do you think that they rush the video into print and just have not gotten around to fitting them? They have a proof-of-concept and may be looking for more financing.
They do not seem to be something I’d want to see flying in the centre of Montreal or even over my backyard, but I can see some practical uses for them particularly in some highly isolated areas.
Now if we can fit pontoons. 🙂
From a report about a self-flying taxi service linked in the story from Mano above:
That rules me out right off the bat, with no luggage even.
People have a hard enough time driving around on a 2D surface that has edge boundaries in place. I don’t want to think about them moving through 3D space w/o boundaries. Autonomous piloting might solve that problem but there is still the issue of energy efficiency. It takes a lot less energy to roll something around on a surface than to keep it in the air.
Initially, it seems like it would be very quick and efficient to get from place to place with a flying car but that’s only true if there are very few of them about. Imagine rush hour with everyone coming at you from every direction. I think I would prefer the people mover tubes seen on the opening of Futurama.
Never gonna happen. Terrorism.
Marcus, why not? Imagine a terrorist commanding the flying whatsit to go over the White House, instead it recognises your face and takes you straight to jail. And yeah, I know, hacking. But that can happen to any remotely controlled flying object, in theory.
Noticed that in the video on their website they didn’t put the weight of a human aboard for their trip (200m and back). It was controlled manually via a 5G cellular connection, which is pretty neat. I suppose the military folk won’t be too impressed by a 500k UAV, though they’d probably like the idea of being able to afford their own cellular network with 100% coverage and 50ms latency — because it doesn’t fly if the cellular network isn’t 100%.
Sounds unsafe? No, the EHang people claim that safety is assured. Here’s a quote from the FAQ of one of their toy drones:
When you put it like that, why wouldn’t you yes?
fentex,
Agreed, another fantasy. Some drivers are dangerous in two dimensions allowing them three would be crazy.
Think positive: the third dimension will decrease their changes of hitting anything they are aiming at.
Lassi Hippeläinen, the third dimension just increases the velocity with which they hit what they’re not aiming at.