Posted on 11/08/2023 10:46:48 AM PST by Red Badger
(Bloomberg) -- Hyundai Motor Group, the world’s third-biggest automaker by sales, plans to build a facility in the US where its air mobility division Supernal will make flying electric taxis intended to be used by commuters.
A prototype of the electric vertical take-off and landing craft will be shown at CES in Las Vegas in January, Supernal Chief Executive Officer Shin Jaiwon said.
The eVTOL taxi will be capable of flying at 120 miles an hour (190 kph) and have capacity for one pilot and four passengers. December 2024 is the target for a test flight, with ambitions to start commercial service four years later, Shin said in an interview this week with Bloomberg News in Singapore.
“Considering all the battery technology and all the infrastructure and regulation to come along, it’s going to take some time,” he said.
Batteries are the biggest technical challenge for electric air mobility, accounting for up to 40% of an eVTOL craft’s weight. “That’s really the killer,” Shin said.
“From the operation side, we don’t have air traffic management systems to govern these vehicles,” he said. “Up until this point, even the foreseeable future, we don’t have man-made objects flying routinely below 500 meters.”
Next Steps
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
Flying taxis, driven by Pakistanis?.............
I wonder if they will be as easy to steal as their autos?
Can you imagine Manhattan streets with no taxis. Flying taxis would free up the streets for regular traffic. Sensors to detect walls, and GPS to find destinations.
I might need to drive for uber in the future.
The air will be so clogged with taxis that you won’t see the sun or sky................
I’m not defending the concept (an all-electric aircraft at this juncture is still several bridges too far) but electric motors do add a lot of flexibility to the concept. Redundancy is easier, especially with the lift-producing motors. Several small electric motors vs fewer ICE engines improves the odds of a controlled landing if things go pear-shaped. Pairing up contra-rotating engines also helps at cancelling out torques the motors apply to the airframe (unbalanced torques being one reason helicopters are notoriously ‘quirky’ to fly).
And in tilt-rotor applications, electric motors drastically reduce the complexity compared to ICE designs.
But Supernal CFO Michael Whitaker is lying out his ass when he claims they’re “zero emissions:”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsuQdKWqPos
Then again, that’s the foundational lie of the battery-only EV. Zero emissions.
Helicopters don’t ‘fly’...... They abstain from crashing between landings...............
Gotta start somewhere, I guess
Maintenance - no doubt.
Fuel Savings - I doubt it. It takes the same propulsive power to move the plane through the air regardless of the power plant (assuming same drag coefficient). The recent estimates are that it takes gasoline at $17/gallon to equal the cost of powering an EV.
Where are they supposed to land?
IIRC, you lose approximately 20% of the power applied to charge a battery as heat. Then you lose another 20% when you use that power to charge the air taxi battery... Your power density is already low, and you’re going to throw away a large portion of it as waste heat. Also, the faster you charge that battery, the more waste heat you get, and the shorter the battery life. NRTZ was the code we used in the USAF for Not Economical To Repair... This idea is NRTZ!
Maybe if we ever manage to make & perfect superconductor capacitors... But chemical storage batteries just aren’t up to the demand.
“The recent estimates are that it takes gasoline at $17/gallon to equal the cost of powering an EV.”
That was debunked last week.
“Fuel Savings - I doubt it. It takes the same propulsive power to move the plane through the air regardless of the power plant (assuming same drag coefficient). The recent estimates are that it takes gasoline at $17/gallon to equal the cost of powering an EV.”
—————Facts——————
At 30 mpg that is about 10 cents per mile for an ICE.
An EV uses about -.25 kwhr per mile. At 12 cents per kwhr that is 3 cents per mile.
“I wonder if they will be as easy to steal as their autos?”
Source?
“We have air taxis now. They’re called helicopters.”
Helicopter travel is one of the riskiest forms of transportation due to an assortment of factors including variations in pilot experience and training, unsafe or rapidly changing weather conditions, variations in terrain and visibility along flight routes, mechanical malfunctions, shortfalls in maintenance protocols, and lack of safety technologies and industry regulations. To put it simply, helicopters are more likely to crash than most other types of aircraft; this is true for tour and medical helicopters as well as helicopters used in military and search-and-rescue missions.
I could not agree more. My point is that people keep coming along and reinventing the wheel...like The Hyperloop. A bus or a streetcar would be a hundred times more cost efficient. Believe me, there would be nothing safer than helicopters about air taxis. All the same problems would exist.
“Believe me, there would be nothing safer than helicopters about air taxis. All the same problems would exist.”
No. The main problems with helicopters do not exist with EV taxis.
With multiple rotors there is no need to counter the main rotor torque. Gearing related to the main tail rotors is a high failure path resulting in fatal crashes.
One engine failure on a helicopter results in a crash. Not so with EV taxis.
-----------------------------
Tampa International Airport tests electric air taxi for first time
https://www.tampabay.com/news/transportation/2023/11/02/tampa-international-airport-electric-air-taxi-volocopter-test-flight/
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tbt/Q6I2Y3NI7BEY3BYHLS3GVCKJBU.jpg)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
