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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

#81

Post by edblarney »

castratikron wrote: post #75
edblarney wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Their business model has no barrier to entry." Critical mass of drivers, particularly within a specific market area - and brand - are definitely barriers to entry. There are network externalities for sure. If you go to city ABC and 'everyone is on Uber' - as a consumer, you'll probably just use Uber. Drivers? Well, they'll just sign up for Uber if there's little else. A 'new market entrant' will have a 'chicken and…

I've got both Uber and Lyft on my phone, which I guess could be analogous to having two hot dog stands on the same block. Drivers can switch between the two just as easily. You're right though, they do have a well-established brand, and they have spent a lot of effort in getting around all sorts of legal problems. I wonder, though, if the legal things that Uber has paved the way on would ever make it easier for some…

Yes, but you don't have 'ABC lift' on your phone. Why? Because ABC has almost no drivers, and because it has almost no drivers, no customers, which means it's hard to attract drivers. - hence, network externalization as a barrier.

There are tons of Uber-like companies, and you've never heard of them largely for this reason.

Re: Uber Hires Veteran NASA Engineer to Develop Flying Cars

#82

Post by iaw »

bogomipz wrote: post #80
iaw wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I share your theory. I think Uber was dominant and in a great position financially until it tried to aggressively continue it's expansion into immature markets using subsidies. Their fixed costs have exploded while revenue hasn't grown as quickly. There's no reason this technology can't/wont work from a science perspective. From an engineering, consumer, political standpoint this concept is such a non-starter. The mo…

What do you define to be an "immature market" in this context?

China specifically and any other area where the fixed costs of operation for Uber outpace any marginal cost they can get off the region due to exchange rate inequalities.

Re: Uber Hires Veteran NASA Engineer to Develop Flying Cars

#83

Post by iaw »

jessriedel wrote: post #56
iaw wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> allows for a single car to fly from A to B safely "Safely" will never mean a 0% crash rate. So, when a failure occurs that causes the vehicle to crash uncontrollably the property damage and casualty level will be determined largely by the vertical density of the vehicles. > But trucks are less efficient than container ships, and we still use the former when the latter is impossible or too slow Two issues with this:…

The arguments you're making are no more convincing than historical ones like "it will never make economic sense for an individual to pay for their own computer" or "elevators are an inherently dangerous form of travel".

It'll make sense for us to travel to mars, colonize outer space, cure cancer, and a whole host of other things that are presently impossible.

Computers and elevators aren't comparable analogies, perhaps the jetpack is?

Re: Uber Hires Veteran NASA Engineer to Develop Flying Cars

#84

Post by iaw »

jessriedel wrote: post #58
inlineint wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once we've accepted the hypothetical that technology allows for a single car to fly from A to B safely (which is almost certainly automated), it seems clear that having cars move at different altitude will be trivially possible. In real world we can't accept this because there are always unpredictable factors, we can only say that probability of a safe flight in a single car is say 99.999%. Then if there are 20 car…

Avoiding a car that crashes in the lane next to you is a lot harder than avoiding a car that falls 100 feet from above. Yet we have multi-lane highways.

That's an asinine statement if I've ever read one.

I've been present for 2 highways collisions, avoiding them is super easy. Which is why full lane closures and multi-car pile-ups are as infrequent as they are relative to the frequency of two car accidents.

A vehicle that falls from 100 feet above will be accelerating unlike vehicles in an accident on a highway which will rapidly decelerate.

Furthermore, you now have multiple vehicles taking evasive action based on dynamic predictions that cannot incorporate a collision. The second that one car hits another you're going to lose a chunk of your column from pachinko like bouncing.

Now, instead of a small mechanical failure you can have drastic loss of life because all of the occupants plummeted to their death.

Do you work for Uber?

Re: Uber Hires Veteran NASA Engineer to Develop Flying Cars

#85

Post by bogomipz »

ordinarySeeker wrote: post #48
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…

If we approach the problem from a perspective of "How to make flying a viable commute option?" we can come up with atleast a few scenarios 1) Cities near water bodies like SFO, NYC, Miami or even Chicago can benefit from over water flying cars. This provides some safety while making more areas livable within a short commute to downtown. 2) Places like Mumbai, Bangalore where car ownership has outpaced the governments…

> Cities near water bodies like SFO, NYC, Miami or even Chicago can benefit from over water flying cars"

I don't agree. While there may be less impediments to putting that traffic over the waterways the challenges are still significant.

Just using NYC as an example:

A high density of bridges.

A High volume of existing commercial and passenger boat traffic.

A number of busy heliports are located along the waterways.

And although the rivers could help you navigate you up or downtown they provide no efficient means of going across town further limiting this as a viable option.

Re: Uber Hires Veteran NASA Engineer to Develop Flying Cars

#86

Post by bsder »

edblarney wrote: post #81
castratikron wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got both Uber and Lyft on my phone, which I guess could be analogous to having two hot dog stands on the same block. Drivers can switch between the two just as easily. You're right though, they do have a well-established brand, and they have spent a lot of effort in getting around all sorts of legal problems. I wonder, though, if the legal things that Uber has paved the way on would ever make it easier for some…

Yes, but you don't have 'ABC lift' on your phone. Why? Because ABC has almost no drivers, and because it has almost no drivers, no customers, which means it's hard to attract drivers. - hence, network externalization as a barrier. There are tons of Uber-like companies, and you've never heard of them largely for this reason.

> Yes, but you don't have 'ABC lift' on your phone. Why? Because ABC has almost no drivers, and because it has almost no drivers, no customers, which means it's hard to attract drivers. - hence, network externalization as a barrier.

Actually, I do. But I only have 'ABC lift" for local, native areas that I am in continuously.

I tend to use Lyft when I am out of my home area.

Re: Uber Hires Veteran NASA Engineer to Develop Flying Cars

#87

Post by rustmemcpy »

FabHK wrote: post #42
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. For reference, a Cessna 172 flies around 110 knots = 125 miles per hour, and uses about 10 gallons per hour, so it gets about 12 mpg. Granted, that's pretty bad, but that's about 1950's technology, and it's not orders of magnitudes. And in 3D you have MUCH more space (in fact, one reason that there are so relatively few mid air collisions…

"The sky is big" is a fallacy in aviation because aircraft don't move unconstrained in 3D space. Typically they are restricted to narrow corridors where collision probability greatly increases.

I imagine the same applies to air commute, considering most people will be converging into a small number of waypoints.

Re: Uber Hires Veteran NASA Engineer to Develop Flying Cars

#88

Post by FnuGk »

snowwrestler wrote: post #74
FnuGk wrote: post #66

I never understood the point of flying cars. Do we not already have those but call them airplanes? Flying cars seem infeasible to operate for the mass consumer as they (like airplanes) require extensive training to operate safely.

The idea is that they are self-driving flying cars, so consumers don't need training. While the physics of flight are more complex than driving, the environment is far less complex (straight-line between points, few obstacles along the way). Flight is better suited to automation, and in fact we already have very reliable autopilots and computer-enhanced airplanes. That said, I think the fuel costs of flying mean it w…

I still do not understand the difference between a flying car and an air plane.

Re: Uber Hires Veteran NASA Engineer to Develop Flying Cars

#89

Post by Robotbeat »

iaw wrote: post #49
FabHK wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Flying is not a valid commute solution and never will be because of physics. For reference, a Cessna 172 flies around 110 knots = 125 miles per hour, and uses about 10 gallons per hour, so it gets about 12 mpg. Granted, that's pretty bad, but that's about 1950's technology, and it's not orders of magnitudes. And in 3D you have MUCH more space (in fact, one reason that there are so relatively few mid air collisions…

I'm glad you make this comparison because it leads directly to my point about why flight (in these forms) is infeasible as a broad consumer commute technology. In 1950 a car cost ~$1.5K in the US, GDP per capita was ~9.6K. So it was around 0.16 of GDP per Capita to purchase a new car. In 2016 GDP per capita had risen to $53k with a new car costing between 17K and 33K depending on how you look at it. This is 0.32 to 0…

There are about 2000 Cessnas produced every year, globally. If you only produced about 2000 cars per year, they'd cost on the order of $160,000 as well. The key is to produce tens of thousands of them (and more standardized than the Cessnas) so you can get mass production to work.

And anyway, even if it cost that much, it's still a viable route for commuting using a rideshare service like Uber if you have 3-4 people sharing the same vehicle and you're shaving off 2 hours of commuting each day (500 hours extra per year at $30/hour gives you $15,000 extra per year PER PERSON).

Re: Uber Hires Veteran NASA Engineer to Develop Flying Cars

#90

Post by [deleted] »

EthanHeilman wrote: post #67
bduerst wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which could be true if Uber's self driving car project lasted longer than a week. Other companies have already logged tens of thousands of road hours into their self-driving car research. At this point, it seems more like these announcements into researching more solid business models are a red herring, like the previous commenter said. You don't need to see the end product to know if progress is being made.

They did hire some of the top self-driving car (can we call them autocars?) researchers. >"these announcements into researching more solid business models are a red herring" My view is that they are attempting to develop a more solid business model. Why wouldn't they try? Even if they fail to turn it into business it creates value that can sell to the companies that do succeed. Besides if they need a shiney for their…

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