• Spoony ( Spoony@beehaw.org ) 
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    3 years ago

    I barely trust the average consumer to be able to drive, I can’t imagine people being able to fly whenever. Also- who actually needs this and why?

    • Hey, if someone can actually do it in a way that:

      • Satisfies public safety requirements
      • Satisfies all legal requirements
      • Restricts usage to trained pilots or autopilot
      • Runs on electricity or other low/zero emission fuel source
      • Lasts an appreciable amount of time before recharge

      Then it may free up public roads enough to push pedestrian and bike usage while offering people a large incentive to go electric. I just don’t think the technology for personal automobile-aircraft hybrids is there yet.

      I’d love to be proven wrong.

  • jaywalker ( jaywalker@beehaw.org ) 
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    3 years ago

    The video doesn’t give the real info until the end. The FAA gave them limited certification, for one of their prototypes. I would guess they are now allowed to operate their prototype over lightly populated areas, and only for R&D purposes.

  • Oliver ( zomtecos@feddit.de ) 
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    3 years ago

    Well. So far only animations. What’s bothering me: the car chassis is designed to be mainly „transparent“ like a grill. Where the hell do they store all the energy? Flying needs a huge amount of energy, especially when you don’t use wings to glide. Even if the car really gets build and flies. They would need huge batteries. Which would need a huge space. Which I cannot see where it could be within this design.

    Conclusion: 🤷‍♂️

  • This will never make it off the ground. The FAA is going to put extreme restrictions on this, like you can’t fly the car in populated areas or you have designated zones where you’re allowed to take off. And that’s if they ever actually make it to real production. This honestly seems like the kind of thing that exists for a team to put together a prototype, absorb a ludicrous amount of venture capital for how likely it is for this to actually come to fruition, sell the company as quickly as possible to Google or Tesla for even more money, and then have the company that bought them realize they fell for a “cat in the bag” scam and then kill the project almost immediately after they realize that at no point was this ever going to resolve into a marketable product, since the things are almost certainly total deathtraps that not even your more suicidal brand of rich imbecile would go near.

  • Definitely a new/different take on the concept. Other than the clips in this video, I’m sad that I couldn’t find a more detailed breakdown, such as diagrams of all the props, speed stats, where the motors are? Do the same motors turn the wheels? or are the props always pushing? Neat!

  • Gork ( Gork@beehaw.org ) 
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    3 years ago

    I just want to have someone like the Avispa Buzzer from Far Cry 6 in real life. Does anyone know why it might not be possible? Is it a matter of insufficient lift for a craft of that size? It has a rotor on the front and back so those can counter rotate with respect to each other to cancel the torque. Then just need to set up a fly-by-wire avionics system to handle all the hovering.

    I want a flying car that I was promised when I was a child dammit.