41–50 of 89 posts
This makes a lot of sense for Toyota. Their hydrogen fuel cells probably make a lot more sense in this context.
How would hydrogen make more sense?
This is more complex than I summarised, containing hydrogen effectively being one issue.
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From what I gather most companies in the space plan to land and take off from rooftops. That leaves a lot more options for stations and edges connecting them leading to a denser network than something like a subterranean train which requires dedicated stations with tunnels in between them
There's actually examples of this in the world now. In São Paulo, the rich take helicopters between buildings [1]. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jun/20/brazil
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The people with the money for these have the political power to force others to deal with the noise. Already, helicopters have remarkably few restrictions. If you can afford one, you can fly it almost anywhere you want.
I really don't see a pattern of any sort of large scale noise pollution via helicopter forced on people to think it will somehow be sure a thing.
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Even so there are only 469 (in 2008 according to the article) in all of São Paulo and that’s the metro area with the most helicopters in the world. I doubt the likes of Hyundai are looking to sell their things “in the hundreds to thousands” range. It’d a a big change in air traffic and noise pollution.
You'd be surprised how far 469 heliports go. That's one more than the number of stations the NY Metro has, which is the metro with the most number of stations in the world. Now imagine you could travel as the crow flies between any station in NYC. That's awesome efficiency, and if you still need you can grab an Uber at street level if you're still not close enough. You're also not limited to just those 469 heliports.…
This is pretty much everything you need to know about Toyota - everything you need to know about corporate Japan - wrapped up neatly in one anecdote. Toyota can’t make a plug-in electric car to save themselves but for white elephants like flying cars and smart cities they are all in.
Uh the Prius Prime and (later this year) RAV4 prime exist or will soon. What’s your point?
They went after shiny unrealistic options like Fuel Cells/Hydrogen and wasted their lead. The world would have looked very different now if they had invested in Electric 10 years ago. Their "plug-in" electrics have 20-40 miles of all electric range. Even Ford has vehicles with 200+ miles range.
Instead, they still have only concept vehicles and their exec VP still says “We haven’t changed our policy towards battery EVs. We are not shifting our focus to prioritise battery EVs, nor are we abandoning our FCV strategy.” source: https://ww.electrek.co/2019/06/07/toyota-electric-car-images...
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Wheels are really awesome at fighting gravity when the engine dies so I’m not sure I ever see a time people are flying around in personal aircraft en masse. I’ve seen enough try to drive on the ground.
Just an FYI, helicopters can land without engine power by autorotation. I'm assuming these things, if you're putting people in them, would do the same. Additionally, autonomous flight is fairly common right now. There's less going on in the air than on the ground (or rather less surprises with small response time and high consequences). Planes even land and take off by themselves. The first plane to actually be certi…
Autonomous flight is still quite rare. And even when it is used, there are still human pilots standing by to take over in case anything goes wrong.
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They said the same about doctors, and yet heart surgery is done by real people. All your NNs are entirely completely utterly pointless when faced with inputs they have never been trained on. They always suck at extrapolating, and almost always suck at interpolating as well. So when an unexpected emergency happens, what exactly are they going to do? And outside of NNs, The only thing we have are autopilots. They somet…
Just an FYI, planes already regularly fly by themselves. Auto landing has even been around since the late 60's.
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Wheels are really awesome at fighting gravity when the engine dies so I’m not sure I ever see a time people are flying around in personal aircraft en masse. I’ve seen enough try to drive on the ground.
Additionally, people forget the extra energy cost of fighting gravity. It takes a lot more energy to use a motor and prop to directly resist gravity, rather than using a static object like a wheel. Energy loss fighting gravity with a propeller >> energy loss fighting wheel friction.
If an aircraft can’t glide or autorotate then I don’t understand how it can be safe at low altitudes. Because whole plane parachutes (BRS) have a minimum altitude required to open successfully, and that altitude is a lot higher than anyone would care to drop. Airplanes have energy from their forward motion. Helicopters have energy in their rotor blades. This energy can be used to soften a crash landing. Without this…
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Uh the Prius Prime and (later this year) RAV4 prime exist or will soon. What’s your point?
Not OP, but I'm guessing their point is that Toyota has completely missed the boat on electrification where they had an early lead with the Prius. They went after shiny unrealistic options like Fuel Cells/Hydrogen and wasted their lead. The world would have looked very different now if they had invested in Electric 10 years ago. Their "plug-in" electrics have 20-40 miles of all electric range. Even Ford has vehicles…
Tesla seems bound to demonstrate that even semis are already viable with current technology, and battery research is bound to reduce price, weight and longevity further. We may find chemistries that rely less on materials like cobalt, nickel, copper.
Is it pride and inability to accept failure, or are there valid reasons for this and Toyota could still emerge as a big winner?
It seems unlikely to me for personal cars.
Hydrogen seems better suited for energy storage, trains and airplanes.