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Uber Hires Veteran NASA Engineer to Develop Flying Cars

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Re: Uber Hires Veteran NASA Engineer to Develop Flying Cars

#21

Post by iaw »

nether wrote: post #14
iaw wrote: post #5

This strikes me as pretty pathetic effort by Uber to make itself appear forward looking Flying is not a valid commute solution and never will be because of physics. All things equal, the energy requirements to change elevation will be too great to justify adoption. The system only becomes useful/safe if you "stack" vehicles on roadways. What happens when one has a failure and crashes? This is either market signaling…

> Flying is not a valid commute solution and never will be because of physics. All things equal, the energy requirements to change elevation will be too great to justify adoption. That only ensures that flying cars will always be more expensive than ground cars, not that per capita income will always be too low to have mass adoption of flying cars.

> That only ensures that flying cars will always be more expensive than ground cars, not that per capita income will always be too low to have mass adoption of flying cars.

True, but the economics of energy/housing/transit indicate that there never will be mass adoption if it's also the more expensive option.

Re: Uber Hires Veteran NASA Engineer to Develop Flying Cars

#22

Post by stephengillie »

aetherson wrote: post #3

I feel this is additional evidence for my theory that Uber is in big trouble and is trying to spin a bunch of pixie dust into some kind of dumb money exit for its increasingly angry investors.

It's an old salesman's technique, to distract the client from current problems with the product, by selling shiny new features. It's similar to distracting a baby from the problems of life, with your shiny keys, in lieu of more appropriate toys.

Re: Uber Hires Veteran NASA Engineer to Develop Flying Cars

#23

Post by ilamont »

There's a flying car company, Terrafugia (1), that came out of MIT ten years ago and they have working prototypes. There's an old YouTube video here (2) and apparently they have "persuaded the FAA to grant Terrafugia a waiver of weight and stall-speed limits so it can self-certify its Transition flying car as a light sport aircraft" (3).

Not sure of the safety implications or the commercial viability of flying cars for Uber, but there are people out there who want to be able to own or fly an aircraft and not have to deal with various hassles that come with traditional aircraft ownership.

1. https://www.terrafugia.com/

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnF2yua4KIw

3. http://aviationweek.com/technology/faa-light-sport-aircraft-...

Re: Uber Hires Veteran NASA Engineer to Develop Flying Cars

#24

Post by iaw »

jayjay71 wrote: post #20
iaw wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are completely right. Shipping automation has a lot of potential. I don't think Uber has any strong competitive advantage in the self-driving space relative to all of the other players. I've been wrong about these things before. The thing that may put them at a disadvantage is their history of ignoring regulations compared to companies like Google. Even if they develop the technology quickly enough they may be sc…

I'm biased because I used to work with many of the people Uber hired for self-driving cars, but they bought really great engineering talent. Great talent doesn't mean much though if the management is bad, and after their whole illegal testing in California debacle it makes me cautious. That said, I didn't realize just how far ahead Google/Waymo is with regards to self-driving cars. If you check out the report of auto…

> I'm biased because I used to work with many of the people Uber hired for self-driving cars, but they bought really great engineering talent

I think that's a fair perspective and I don't discount the capabilities and talents of the people working at Uber, it's the people running Uber that I don't believe are capable of steering the ship.

A friend of mine who has been an executive at a couple tech companies have chatted about the "no grown-up" phenomenon. Essentially, you can have a ton of super-talented people but if there isn't a 'grown-up' (irrespective of age) providing the managerial/fiduciary discipline (think Steve Jobs and Elon Musk as the epitome of this) then the challenges of running a successful business will quickly outpace the efforts of the talented engineers working there.

The number of teams/engineers that unilaterally work on overlapping projects or projects that don't serve any purpose can rapidly drown the needed forward progress.

Re: Uber Hires Veteran NASA Engineer to Develop Flying Cars

#25

Post by ben_w »

iaw wrote: post #21
nether wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Flying is not a valid commute solution and never will be because of physics. All things equal, the energy requirements to change elevation will be too great to justify adoption. That only ensures that flying cars will always be more expensive than ground cars, not that per capita income will always be too low to have mass adoption of flying cars.

> That only ensures that flying cars will always be more expensive than ground cars, not that per capita income will always be too low to have mass adoption of flying cars. True, but the economics of energy/housing/transit indicate that there never will be mass adoption if it's also the more expensive option.

Cost is not the only concern, if it was then all cars would be the most energy efficient possible and Hummers with similar fuel efficiency to small Cessna aircraft would never have been made.

Re: Uber Hires Veteran NASA Engineer to Develop Flying Cars

#26

Post by EthanHeilman »

_red wrote: post #12
aetherson wrote: post #3

I feel this is additional evidence for my theory that Uber is in big trouble and is trying to spin a bunch of pixie dust into some kind of dumb money exit for its increasingly angry investors.

The "self driving car" meme is petering out, so they are attempting to create some hype in order to keep the Ponzi investment flows churning.

By which you mean, coming to fruition?

I'm not the biggest fan of Uber on a number of issues but I think the biggest problem they have is that their investors were planning on having a monopoly on livery. That is clearly not going to happen. Flying cars and self driving cars are actually significantly more sound than their business model and are much more likely to provide a decent ROI. If and when Uber runs out of steam and its assets are liquidated the most valuable part will be research.

Lets check back on this in 10 years.

Re: Uber Hires Veteran NASA Engineer to Develop Flying Cars

#27

Post by lutusp »

Projects like this will eventually produce an airborne commuter vehicle, but:

* It will resemble a scaled-up quadcopter (for which there's already an early prototype: http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/8/11882458/ehang-passenger-qu...)

* It will only happen when batteries are much better than they are now -- more energy density, longer lived, more efficient.

The bottom line is that this idea, like so many around us, is waiting for decent batteries to be invented.

Re: Uber Hires Veteran NASA Engineer to Develop Flying Cars

#28

Post by Pigo »

_red wrote: post #12
aetherson wrote: post #3

I feel this is additional evidence for my theory that Uber is in big trouble and is trying to spin a bunch of pixie dust into some kind of dumb money exit for its increasingly angry investors.

The "self driving car" meme is petering out, so they are attempting to create some hype in order to keep the Ponzi investment flows churning.

I still don't think I understand why self-driving cars is nothing more than a publicity stunt for them. I've heard people say it's not working, and the cars they have on the road are for show. But why can it not ever be a functioning part of their business when there are cars that can do this?

Re: Uber Hires Veteran NASA Engineer to Develop Flying Cars

#29

Post by LeifCarrotson »

iaw wrote: post #21
nether wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Flying is not a valid commute solution and never will be because of physics. All things equal, the energy requirements to change elevation will be too great to justify adoption. That only ensures that flying cars will always be more expensive than ground cars, not that per capita income will always be too low to have mass adoption of flying cars.

> That only ensures that flying cars will always be more expensive than ground cars, not that per capita income will always be too low to have mass adoption of flying cars. True, but the economics of energy/housing/transit indicate that there never will be mass adoption if it's also the more expensive option.

> True, but the economics of energy/housing/transit indicate that there never will be mass adoption if it's also the more expensive option.

That depends largely on any negative value that's charged against living in an undesirable location, and on the subjective value a person ascribes to living in a desired location. And that subjective value can remain constant, while the cost of energy and transit decrease, and the economic value created by the person increases.

Yes, it would probably be economically more efficient to live in low-cost housing projects within a few minutes walk of the offices of megacorporations. But millions of people (76% of Americans, according to this 2009 survey: http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/acs-15.pdf) choose to drive an single-occupant automobile to work, averaging a 25-minute commute each way. And few would give up their acre of land and private home to live in an apartment closer to work.

If you could take a high-speed helicopter from Monterey to an office in Silicon Valley for $5 and a 15-minute flight, instead of hours of your time, or $500 in helicopter costs, would you really live in on-campus housing because it was more economically efficient? Yes, flying a helicopter for an hour takes a lot of energy: on the order of 1,000 kilowatts per hour. And yes, helicopters are really expensive and niche. But technology is constantly decreasing both the cost of that energy and the difficulty and operating expenses of flying machines.

Re: Uber Hires Veteran NASA Engineer to Develop Flying Cars

#30

Post by usrusr »

_red wrote: post #12
aetherson wrote: post #3

I feel this is additional evidence for my theory that Uber is in big trouble and is trying to spin a bunch of pixie dust into some kind of dumb money exit for its increasingly angry investors.

The "self driving car" meme is petering out, so they are attempting to create some hype in order to keep the Ponzi investment flows churning.

Or a less evil version of the same: dazzle the investors they already have lest they decide to cut losses before all that tasty runway is burnt to completion.

With all the investment Uber already has (maybe more than their complete target market could ever be worth?) I suspect that they don't really hope for more. Some of their predatory pricing schemes might actually be a panic reaction to not having stopped raising earlier.

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