[kaon_2]

"Distinguishing hype from reality is not easy. But recent developments mean that ambitious promises could be fulfilled. "

Just like AI is changing the world before our eyes, this may be just such a technology. Maybe I will come to resent them when they are omnipresent, but a person-transporting drone (EVTOL) flying on a solid state battery would be transformative in connecting people, and I cannot wait to see it happen. The EU has committed 500bn in inter-european railway investment by 2050. Maybe it will be entirely disrupted? Who knows.

[lavela]

Maybe I am missing something, but I haven't seen a solution to the noise problem of air traffic (especially anything rotor based).

Might not be an issue for long distance connection in sparsely populated countries like the United States, but I don't see it replacing trains in Europe until this is solved.

[bobthepanda]

There is also the fairly obvious problem of safe operations in urban areas.

Rooftop helicopters were banned from Manhattan’s office buildings after a helicopter tipped over and decapitated waiting passengers, and then the blade fell to the street level where it killed another person.

[xnorswap]

Flying no matter how diminutive always has the issue of Newton's third law. This requires having large empty landing zones to be safe, or you risk having people land on you, which would hurt no matter how slowly they're coming in.

[Zigurd]

In the way Boring Co. disrupted subways?

[jwr]

I had a chance to fly a simulator of the Beta Technologies VTOL airplane (they're a PartsBox customer). I went from horizontal flight into hover, and my guide said "oh, by the way, you are consuming a megawatt right now".

A megawatt. To hover.

That really opened my eyes to the reality: unless we have unlimited, clean and nearly free fusion power, flying cars are not going to be a thing.

[Manuel_D]

Two things here: one, hovering is actually much more energy intensive than horizontal flight. Two, a megawatt isn't that much energy in the context of aerospace. A 737 engine produces nearly 100 megawatts at peak output (the engines are rated in terms of pounds of force, so the conversion is a bit wonky).

[tekacs]

This conclusion is... kinda absurd.

In any reasonable setup, hovering would be a rare, rare operation (like 30-60 seconds during takeoff and landing), with most of the time spent in wing-borne forward flight – which'd be _wildly_ lower power usage, more like 200-250kW tops. About ~par with staying in continuous acceleration in an EV. More for sure, but not nearly as insane as what you're pointing to.

... and this is exactly where better batteries would help – being able to hold that power level for longer so you could actually go places in earnest without untenable mass.

[scottLobster]

Is it? If we're talking about a future where EVTOL takes over for passenger cars, there will be air traffic jams with delays that require extended circling and likely hovering.

There's a reason all the EVTOL startups show individual vehicles landing in pristine fields, and it's the same reason car advertisements show one car on a closed course instead of I-95 at 3pm on a Friday

[tekacs]

... air traffic jams? The air is _much_ bigger than the corresponding ground.

Certainly there'd be density _at_ take-off and landing, but even that's manageable by having e.g. arrival/departure locations at multiple heights.

It also seems vanishingly unlikely (at this point) that we'd have EVTOL that's not fully autonomous, further reducing the odds of this - ~perfect and coordinated driving, as well as foreknowledge of what's happening between you and the arrival location drastically reduces traffic.

[dmbche]

Do you know how planes land at an airport? They circle waiting for their turn. Why would that problem vanish?

[tekacs]

... because the entire point of VTOL (which is what the parent commentary was about) is that you can take off and land vertically and therefore don't need one of a few, scarce, super-long runways? ... and the waiting you're talking about is entirely because of those?

On top of that, small VTOL craft that can hover and would be at lower speeds closer in (esp. autonomously flown) would just need less mutual clearance compared to jets, which also have an altitude band they have to stay in, as well as no ability to slow to a crawl and coordinate finely.

[DanielHB]

I have been thinking this for quite a while now, electric planes will kill a lot of rail routes. However I am still skeptical about the EVTOL form factor for mass scale transportation, at least on the short or medium term.

I think we are going to see a lot of fragmentation in modes of transport where we have jets going from international airports for long range, small electric planes in small airports for that 50-300km distance low-frequency destinations. And rail only for high-frequency destinations.

In fact I imagine that electric vs jet planes math will get so crazy that it might kill some international hubs that are too far inland, companies will want people off jets into electric propeller planes as fast as possible.

[lacewing]

> I have been thinking this for quite a while now, electric planes will kill a lot of rail routes

Why? If you have an existing rail network, trains are bound to be cheaper than planes and can get to more places (including convenient centrally-located stations in most major metro areas).

Plus, air travel is generally miserable unless you have a private / chartered plane. Crowds, long lines, security screenings, opaque and abusive pricing models, etc. This is not something we couldn't fix, but over the past 30 years, it's gotten a lot worse, not better; electric planes don't automatically change that. In contrast, rail travel in Europe is almost universally pleasant and hassle-free.

[dash2]

> In contrast, rail travel in Europe is almost universally pleasant and hassle-free.

Laughs hollowly in German.

[DanielHB]

I think electric planes will get far smaller and be more like intercity buses. And small airports with small runways in more central locations will start to appear.

[kvdveer]

If flying ever becomes efficient energy-wise, this may happen. However, right now, flying is very energy inefficient, so anything that doesn't need to be flown, is transported overland to save costs. A change of fuel won't change it, unless the underlying energy usage changes fundamentally.

Better batteries do not impact energy usage, only the means of energy delivery.

[bluGill]

For high volume routes rail is best. For lower volume automated cars on the highway are more efficient than flying by enough that only the rich will fly - just like today. You can book a helicopter flight home today if you are willing to pay for all the fuel. However even at 1/10th the energy cost, a car will be vastly cheaper and so what most people will choose. We also will continue to use trucks to move freight for many of these trips, so the roads will exist either way.

There is one other issue with flying: it often isn't legal - for good reason - to fly and land where you want to be. For a 300km trip flying to an airport is fine (if there is one close - they are not evenly scattered around), but at 50km you may as well drive the whole way instead of transfer at the airport - unless you live very close to the airport (which you won't because of noise)

[Descon]

Rail will always be more efficient since you don't have to carry the load. I think places that never built passenger rail (Alberta has been toying with Edmonton to Calgary since they've existed) this will wipe out the need for them.

[jeffbee]

A lot of the weirdos are trying to force trains to be worse by carrying batteries. Almost everyone knows this is crazy, except some Americans with surprising influence.

[cguess]

Most trains are diesel-electric, so they already have batteries? For those unaware, in this type of engine the diesel engine is actually a generator which charges the batteries and then the electrical power is used to drive the train. It's actually more efficient for the torque needed.

[jeffbee]

Diesel-electric trains do not have traction batteries. And they don't even carry half of the reactants for their engines.

[FuriouslyAdrift]

In the US, over 70% of commuter rail uses shared freight track and electric planes are not going to be moving freight.

[dmbche]

Where have you heard of electric planes being so much more energy efficient than jets?

[sublinear]

Rail is energy efficient and extremely reliable. You're not going to win on either of those metrics.

[jeffbee]

Recent history is full of examples of trains that killed air routes. Trains took 80% market share from Paris to Lyon and 100% to Brussels. Similar in Spain and Japan.

[cguess]

Trains are absolutely better but France also outlawed most of those short haul flights. https://www.euronews.com/2024/07/06/frances-short-haul-fligh...

[jeffbee]

This mostly codified established reality. TGV had overwhelming Paris-Lyon market share by 1981 and Paris-Bordeaux by 2018, years before the ban.

[scottLobster]

We have these things called helicopters, they are already made small enough for single occupants and have been for decades. Making them electric and automated doesn't make them less of a helicopter with all of the issues of existing helicopters.

For instance, I will never have any desire to risk the air traffic clusterfuck of hundreds of EVTOLs with different computers from different brands with different levels of maintenance trying to land/take-off in a Costco parking lot to grab a rotisserie chicken on their way home from work.

It isn't a technology problem. EVTOL only makes sense where helicopters currently make sense.

[OisinMoran]

Your last sentence is simply not true. Helicopters are massive in terms of volume and weight, and incredibly loud. You're also assuming our current layout of everything would stay the same. Imagine if teleportation existed, do you think cities, towns, and suburbs would still look the same?

A collision is less likely in 3D than in 2D, and obviously the chicken would be delivered to you via drone rather than the inverse.

[scottLobster]

EVTOL isn't exactly quiet either. It will annoy the living shit out of your neighbors, particularly if everyone is doing it. Houses/apartments near airports are already cheaper for that reason.

And sure you can contrive whatever clean-slate sci-fi setting you want to try and make it make sense, but we aren't going to be ripping up existing infrastructure for it. This isn't Popular Science cover art.

Collisions are more likely if there's hundreds going to/from the same place at the same time, and also they can just fail and fall out of the sky onto dwellings, roads and businesses in ways that cars can't.

Your vision will be killed politically the first time a child playing on their swing-set or shopping with their mother or driving down the road is killed by a poorly maintained EVTOL.

[empath75]

I would think the most likely use for evtol (assuming, for the sake of argument, that whatever sci-fi technology needs to be invented will be invented to make it cost effective) is autopilot flights that are currently long commutes with a lot of traffic -- ie: Suburbs to city center and back, or long cross suburb trips.

[scottLobster]

Autopilot with strictly regulated maintenance and no personal ownership is about the only way it works, assuming your neighbors don't care about the noise

[Groxx]

Multiple smaller rotors does seem to have a powerful simplifying ability due to redundancy and the much better responsiveness it offers.

Generally though I agree with you. Plus it will always use WAY more power than a wheeled vehicle, and have much worse failures.

[scottLobster]

Yeah, they're definitely better helicopters than what came before depending on what you want out of the vehicle, but helicopters nonetheless.

[simmerup]

Electric helicopters come with the advantage that they’re much simpler to maintain surely.

[scottLobster]

Go watch some of these and tell me you trust these people to maintain an EVTOL vehicle, however simple.

https://www.youtube.com/@mechanicalnightmare/videos

We already have fatal car crashes from people who neglect maintenance and don't get their car inspected. Now imagine instead of a 2D plane to cause a wreck, on a road where people are generally alert and paying attention for wrecks, they can fall out of the sky onto kids playing in yards, onto busy roads out of the sun, or just onto each other during the final approach/take-off.

Nope, air travel is only safe because we strictly regulate pilots and maintenance.