Larry Page is pouring millions into flying cars • Hacker News Board

Re: Larry Page is pouring millions into flying cars

#231

Post by api » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 6:55 PM UTC

danbruc wrote: post #31

Do we actually want flying cars? They are probably less efficient because you have to overcome gravity, they are probably going to be pretty noisy, falling out of the sky and smashing into the ground is a new failure mode, ... Flying cars are certainly a nice gadget, but do we really need or want them? I can only think of two good arguments for flying cars, entering the third dimension if we run out of space on the s…

Flying cars won't be used in the same role as land cars. Unless you live some kind of extreme rural life in Montana or something and have money, it's not something an individual would own.

I've always imagined micro airports. They'd be like train stations. Need to get from Irvine, CA to Pasadena, CA in 20 minutes?

With this approach the flight paths could be deterministic and the cars could be reused all the time.

Re: Larry Page is pouring millions into flying cars

#232

Post by pvaldes » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 6:55 PM UTC

danbruc wrote: post #31

Do we actually want flying cars? They are probably less efficient because you have to overcome gravity, they are probably going to be pretty noisy, falling out of the sky and smashing into the ground is a new failure mode, ... Flying cars are certainly a nice gadget, but do we really need or want them? I can only think of two good arguments for flying cars, entering the third dimension if we run out of space on the s…

Any idea that could be a solution for roadkills deserve to be explored at least. Think in the millions of terrestrial animals, some endangered, that we could save each year.

Would be a real blessing for vanishing amphibians, hedgehogs, snakes, endemic terrestrial crabs, big cats... On the other part could be a problem for birds, bats and flying insects also, of course. And will boost the feral cat problem.

For good or worse, from a environmental point of view would be a real game changer.

Re: Larry Page is pouring millions into flying cars

#233

Post by skybrian » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 6:58 PM UTC

nickparker wrote: post #157

danbruc wrote: post #31

Do we actually want flying cars? They are probably less efficient because you have to overcome gravity, they are probably going to be pretty noisy, falling out of the sky and smashing into the ground is a new failure mode, ... Flying cars are certainly a nice gadget, but do we really need or want them? I can only think of two good arguments for flying cars, entering the third dimension if we run out of space on the s…

Surprisingly, they don't actually need to be all that inefficient. The rolling resistance of a typical car is 0.01 to 0.015 [1], so the effective lift/drag ratio of a car's suspension is about 70 to 100, for just the wheels themselves. Missing from this number are the parasitic losses of all other unsprung mass, aerodynamic drag, and the costs incurred by traveling along roads which are neither level nor straight rou…

You need compare the whole system: internal combustion engine plus the gas tanks to feed it, versus an electric motor plus batteries.

The energy density of batteries is far worse than gasoline. Also, after you burn gasoline, you don't have to carry it anymore, which isn't true for batteries.

Also consider that for a plane, running out of gas can be fatal, so you can't actually use all the range. There needs to be a safety margin.

And then, consider that a practical flying car can't actually take off or land like a plane, and probably can't have the wingspan of a plane, so you might want to compare to a helicopter instead.

Re: Larry Page is pouring millions into flying cars

#234

Post by dimino » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 9:22 PM UTC

cooper12 wrote: post #150

dimino wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we want flying cars, and yes we "need" them if we want to solve congestion and traffic as our planet grows beyond 10 billion people.

> if we want to solve congestion and traffic as our planet grows beyond 10 billion people These are all symptoms of a badly designed city. What a place like this needs is better infrastructure, especially public infrastructure such as bike lanes, buses, and trains so that a lot of that traffic isn't necessary. Getting more people into cars will only create more problems. All you're doing is moving that traffic and co…

You don't get to redesign all the cities of the world, and it'd be a mighty impressive feat to move all the traffic to the sky.

There's also a lot more sky up there than there is land down here.

Re: Larry Page is pouring millions into flying cars

#235

Post by tracker1 » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 9:42 PM UTC

knz wrote: post #159

bobsil1 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long after they're blocked by swarms of delivery drones.

I'm skeptical about delivery drones for this reason. Between the noise, security concerns, and visual pollution it will be hard to implement mass adoption of UAV's for delivery.

I could see delivery drones for last-mile drop offs... imagine delivery trucks as automated machines with a small swarm of drones (4-6) per truck.. the truck drives a route on the main street(s), while the drones do the drop-off to the door.

It could work in that scenario... My biggest thought for drones, is it won't work from the distribution centers, simply because they are too far out from a lot of the drop off locations.. but combined with trucks, you could have the trucks drive less in-out, and drones for drop off. Would need a handler in addition to a driver though, depending on automation capability.

This would also need to be supplemented with uber-like service for deliveries that don't fit well for drone drops.

Re: Larry Page is pouring millions into flying cars

#236

Post by aurizon » Sun, Jan 01, 2017, 12:15 AM UTC

kefka wrote: post #187

aurizon wrote: post #175

Translation:- Larry Page is spending millions of his personal wealth - which he is entitled to do - into a development quest to develop personal dual-use road/aircraft. This will never become economic, although is has been shown many times to be doable, with numerous products developed. None survived the economic screen, let alone the FAA screen. Let us see why:- Ever see a traffic jam? lines of 1000's of cars stoppe…

I get smatterings of your comments of the similar old idea of "Can you imagine a mechanical horse carriage where all 4 hooves moved in unison?! Balderdash, I must say. There's no way 4 legs could ever move that fast and that synchronized! It'll never happen. Now, Jeeves, go ready my carriage. We're going to meet a weird entrepreneur by the name of Henry Ford." You're right. With old "state of the art", and yes I do s…

Well, cars came into being at first as steam driven, but the weight was high and there were no hard roads, so they got along on tracks = rail road. Later smaller gasoline driven machines came along (first Benz) and it advanced because it freed us from costly, maintenance intensive, food intensive and crap/pee intensive horses. Before cars many large city street were 2-3 feet deep in horse shit. As for control, huge latency issues would hinder large amounts of traffic.

Re: Larry Page is pouring millions into flying cars

#237

Post by aurizon » Sun, Jan 01, 2017, 12:16 AM UTC

aptwebapps wrote: post #188

aurizon wrote: post #175

Translation:- Larry Page is spending millions of his personal wealth - which he is entitled to do - into a development quest to develop personal dual-use road/aircraft. This will never become economic, although is has been shown many times to be doable, with numerous products developed. None survived the economic screen, let alone the FAA screen. Let us see why:- Ever see a traffic jam? lines of 1000's of cars stoppe…

Just skimmed quickly but I don't think they talking about actual flying cars, i.e., not dual-use. They're talking about small, electric, autonomous aircraft that can take off vertically that could be used on demand.

that would reduce the numbers and with automation and better batteries and a universal grid it might have a chance?

Re: Larry Page is pouring millions into flying cars

#238

Post by andai » Sun, Jan 01, 2017, 2:12 AM UTC

kefka wrote: post #187

aurizon wrote: post #175

Translation:- Larry Page is spending millions of his personal wealth - which he is entitled to do - into a development quest to develop personal dual-use road/aircraft. This will never become economic, although is has been shown many times to be doable, with numerous products developed. None survived the economic screen, let alone the FAA screen. Let us see why:- Ever see a traffic jam? lines of 1000's of cars stoppe…

I get smatterings of your comments of the similar old idea of "Can you imagine a mechanical horse carriage where all 4 hooves moved in unison?! Balderdash, I must say. There's no way 4 legs could ever move that fast and that synchronized! It'll never happen. Now, Jeeves, go ready my carriage. We're going to meet a weird entrepreneur by the name of Henry Ford." You're right. With old "state of the art", and yes I do s…

Thanks for the link, that's incredible. Like, incredibly bad. Have you heard any news on this?

Re: Larry Page is pouring millions into flying cars

#239

Post by macspoofing » Sun, Jan 01, 2017, 5:36 AM UTC

yeppers123 wrote: post #203

_audakel wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many products (cell phones, cars, medical) started off for "the rich" and gradually became mass market. I am very surprised at how many people are not able to see a future where general purpose ground based transportation is obsolete.

It'll happen once the strict licensing is no longer needed. Currently the necessary training for flying is too long and expensive for most people.

It's not just the flight training that's the problem. It's the expense of maintaining and certifing the vehicle, and those regulations will never be loosened.

Re: Larry Page is pouring millions into flying cars

#240

Post by mannykannot » Sun, Jan 01, 2017, 12:50 PM UTC

refulgentis wrote: post #228

mannykannot wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does not so much address the issues as it glosses over them. For example, it assumes that past battery performance trends can be extrapolated, but the battery-makers, -engineers and -chemists themselves do not expect this. Nor does the article attempt to address the noise problem.

I walked away with the impression that trends couldn't be extrapolated, thanks to various snippets from the article, but there's no pull quote that clearly proves it, so, sure. The noise problem you brought up apropos of nothing. You're responding to a comment responding to a comment that had concerns that were already addressed by the article, to let me know your concerns weren't addressed by the article. Surely the…

There are four consecutive paragraphs saying that battery technology is almost there and improving rapidly, and nothing more on the topic, so it is interesting that you got the impression that trends could not be extrapolated.