[tsimionescu]

Autonomous vehicles can't drive in a tunnel yet, and you're imagining flying autonomous cars in 5 years?

Flying cars already exist, they're called helicopters, and they are not a promising consumer technology, and never will be. Flying heavy materials (such as human flesh and bone) is far too energy intensive and inevitably produces too much noise. It is also far too dangerous to become a consumer technology.

[deepnotderp]

1. Autonomy in the air is far easier than on the roads

2. Helicopters have a much lower L/D ratio in forward flight than the tiltrotors being proposed for eVTOLs.

[tsimionescu]

1. Yes, but autonomy in a fixed tunnel would be easier still, and yet the Vegas Loop is using human drivers.

2. Helicopters have the advantage of actually existing in many varied form factors and designs, in common civil use, unlike tiltrotors.

[PowerfulWizard]

Yes, in the air I'm expecting a very different scenario than on land. No pedestrians just an element of collision avoidance for birds, all vehicles legally required to be broadcasting their position to an automated air traffic control, probably maintaining 100 meters between vehicles versus road traffic being 1 meter from oncoming. In the air it would be almost a pre-planned route with a 50 meter collision avoidance corridor. Plus an emergency landing site selection process, potentially the ability to land on water or an emergency parachute.

Part of the reason I found the paper I linked to be persuasive is that they predict the EVTOL aircraft only needing 2-3x the total energy of an EV. The energy cost in dollars could be less than gas for an ICE vehicle making the same trip. There are very light aircraft with 100HP engines, I'm picturing something light and birdlike.