PANEL:
Bill Foy, Senior VP of Engineering, Denso
Jon Rimanelli, Founder/CEO, ASX
John McElroy, Autoline.tv
Flying cars have been part of science fiction fantasy for nearly a century but now fantasy is turning into reality. And the auto industry is starting to explore how it can play a role in what could be a brand-new market. Flying cars could be less than a decade away. That’s today’s topic on Autoline This Week.
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/autolinenetwork
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/Autoline
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/autolinenetwork
WEBSITE: http://www.autoline.tv
Flying cars…I’ll tell you, this Earth is getting to be one irritating place to live.
The V-22 can keep flying with one engine out. The proprotors are connected with a driveshaft spanning the wing. You can verify this by the way the rotors are always synchronized.
One aspect of all of this that I haven’t seen discussed much is maintenance. Unless new regulations are put in place, the FAA requirements for maintenance a much stricter than the automotive world. For example, if maintenance/inspection is required at 100 hrs, at 100 hours the aircraft is no longer airworthy until the maintenance/inspections are signed off my an AMT, if you continue to fly then the FAA will fine you and you could loose your certificate. The other issue is the AMTs (aviation maintenance technicians) themselves. Currently airlines are entering into a shortage of AMTs and it is expected to get worse. This is driving the cost of maintenance up as airlines pay more to attracted qualified people and at the same time the schools have not been able to substantially increase their enrollments to meet this need.
Please let this happen, please let this happen. My commute is 32′ by car (55′ by public transport). By self-flying pod it would be roughly 12′, including time for takeoff and landing. All because of point to point and higher speeds than cars.
Taking my commute as an example, it would literally decrease the amount of people commuting at the same time by 2/3rds.
Very small infrastructure footprint as well, no extra highways… If they can make em’ quiet and safe, there is so many upsides I can’t see this not happening in the near future. Please let this happen!
An hour-and-a-half commute reduced to 8 minutes?
15:58 — … … … … … *_pie in sky?_* ?
Hydrogen, to me at least, seems to be the perfect power source for electric flight. For some reason it isn’t really talked about so much.
John really disappoints me sometimes. He really drinks the Cool Aid on stuff like this. After 36 years flying jet transport aircraft, I have a little better perspective on stuff like this, and almost everything on this show was total BS and hucksterism. If you think taking hundreds of thousands of people out of their cars on the freeway, and putting them in the air above a city like LA is feasible – you have not spent too much time thinking about it. Lets take just one issue – noise. Do you have any idea how hard it is to add a runway to an airport? People anywhere near the new flight path spend many years trying to stop it in court. And most of the time they are successful. Can you imagine the noise thousands of these contraptions flying over your house day and night will cause. And don’t tell me they will be quiet because they are electric. Most of the noise of a small aircraft comes from the propeller, not the engine. Don’t believe me – check out this video of a small aircraft that was converted to all electric. Notice how loud it is when flying directly overhead. Come on John…stop drinking the Cool Aid. Where are those self-driving cars you have said were just around the corner for the past five years…
Pfftttt…flying cars. That promise was given to us many years ago with an article I read in Popular Science – the Anti-Gravette. That never materialized either.
Back when my son was born almost 11yrs ago I spent a little time thinking about the future he will see. I came to see around 2025 many crossover points are reached and we see massive change. Difficult to see past this as it’ll depend greatly on developing the next stage on from silicon chips as we know it today.
I had to call BS on this reporting 2:30 into the story. “Major transportation companies such as Uber” and Elmer FUD never questioned it? An interviewer has to know their transportation business a little better than that, John. Uber can’t even see Union Pacifica’s caboose. We are talking rail in 2019. UPS? Delta Airlines? And you think Uber is in the same ballpark. Clueless.
>energy density