Uber Air coming to Australia

[Thruster88]

For longer range work will Uber go with the Celera 500 or the Raptor, both have unbelievable fuel efficiency ?

 

 

[turboplanner]

As far as Uberplanes flying all over Melbourne in every direction rushing people to the airport, taking them home, if you’ve ever flown, or planned to fly into Tullamarine, remember that fateful transmission; “Requesting airways clearance” and the answer you usually get after you've already phoned ahead for a slot

 

Now multiply that queue by several hundred.

 

 

[fly_tornado]

[turboplanner]

As far as Uberplanes flying all over Melbourne in every direction rushing people to the airport, taking them home, if you’ve ever flown, or planned to fly into Tullamarine, remember that fateful transmission; “Requesting airways clearance”. Now multiply that by thousands and see how long the queue is.

 

 

[onetrack]

@ev17ifly2 - Did you read, "turban air taxis"?? It actually read, "urban air taxis".

 

 

The market for transporting humans around cities could be worth $674bn by 2040, according to a 2018 study by bank Morgan Stanley ..

 

Ching-Ching!!!! The Corporates eyes must have gleaming dollar signs in them.

[onetrack]

As far as Uberplanes flying all over Melbourne in every direction rushing people to the airport, taking them home, if you’ve ever flown, or planned to fly into Tullamarine, remember that fateful transmission; “Requesting airways clearance”. Now multiply that by thousands and see how long the queue is.

I can envision Uber requesting a whole new airway level being made available to them - say, between 50 and 400 feet. As long as they stay away from regular aircraft glide paths, this would probably work.

 

I wonder where the hoverbike fits in here? Anyone with any current knowledge or info, on how the Hoverbike is going with the Dubai Police? Have they accidentally/on purpose, decapitated any speeders in Dubai, yet?

 

 

[mnewbery]

Background info:

 

[/url]https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-results/uber-posts-50-billion-in-annual-bookings-as-profit-remains-elusive-ahead-of-ipo-idUSKCN1Q42CI

 

Uber Technologies, not publicly listed, booked $11B USD earnings before interest, tax depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) last year. Its shares are held by 7 investment funds and a mix of others including the people who started it.

 

To do that it spent around $13B USD and has never made a profit in 10 years.

 

In contrast, Tesla has had one quarter of profit in the same period. I really expected it to by two quarters but I was being hopeful.

 

Summary: Both companies excel at incinerating other peoples' money. Only Uber Technologies is partly owned by the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia. Say what you like about the technology and its viability, that's not the real story here.

 

 

[turboplanner]

I can envision Uber requesting a whole new airway level being made available to them - say, between 50 and 400 feet. As long as they stay away from regular aircraft glide paths, this would probably work.

 

I wonder where the hoverbike fits in here? Anyone with any current knowledge or info, on how the Hoverbike is going with the Dubai Police? Have they accidentally/on purpose, decapitated any speeders in Dubai, yet?

 

Or cut a foot off.

 

I built an off road trike once and ran over my foot testing it.

 

 

[facthunter]

EVERYBODY runs over their foot when they first ride a trike especially the Indian Despatch tow and the Harley version where you sit pretty high. They are b' awful things. Lower slung stuff is much more stable, like Billy Conolley rides when he has nothing on but I'd still have a "straight" motorbike in preference, thanks. Nev

 

 

[mnewbery]

Interestingly, Roland Berger noted that 50% of the Urban Air Taxi development announcements it tracked in the last year to 1st May - just the development announcements, mind - were from one company. Roland Berger noted that Air Taxi feasibility in non ICE propulsion starts at 500 Watt Hours per kilogramme. Telsa car batteries are ~250 Wh/Kg when new, experimental batteries are nibbling at 350 Wh/Kg. In 2016, the Battery 500 consortium got together to (you guessed it) make a 500 Wh/kg battery.

 

A Lithium Ion Polymer battery is basically a bomb that has the useful side effect of being a rechargeable battery. It still only holds 265 Wh/Kg or about 1MJ/Kg. Petrol is 46 MJ/kg as a minimum. Ammonia is 11.5 MJ/L when stored under pressure. Ammonia works in a fuel cell the same way as hydrogen but fuel cells are a bit like the Uber Air super battery. The theory is demonstrated, but mass production and longevity require a bit more magic. Fuel cells in particular are made of really expensive stuff and are really easy to poison.

 

The Battery 500 consortium is a bunch of USA Department of Energy funded labs and universities. They gave themselves five years to deliver something and so far have delivered a cheap organic replacement for vanadium in grid scale flow batteries. The prototype is about the size of a dress watch.

 

Lies, damned lies and charts some forum user plucked off the internet without providing context. Maths, so hard!

 

Anyone seen sodanrot _ylf unicorn? I think it ran off taking the Uber Air super battery plans with it. It heard its name on the ingredient list

 

 

[facthunter]

You can do your calcs. The figures are there. for energy use. Yes high power batteries are somewhat like bombs and promising costs "the same as a car" is fanciful. If THEY don't require an ASIC nor do WE. You could crash any one of those things by all going to one end of it and it'll probably work with an airliner too if it's not going too fast. Nev

 

 

[ClintonB]

Supplying the arm mounted jet pods sounds a better idea. I haven’t seen any new videos on them lately, but they were impressive. At least you could only splat one at a time with them.

 

 

[jetjr]

Some discussion elsewhere that noise will be the key hold up

 

Some experimental electric helicopters have similar noise profile as piston/turbine equivalent

 

Cities and residents wont swallow this with current models, why would they accept if from Uner?

 

 

[mnewbery]

How about a fleet of catapult launched and tail hook equipped drifters? I'd pay for that ride!

 

 

[mnewbery]

Some discussion elsewhere that noise will be the key hold up

 

Some experimental electric helicopters have similar noise profile as piston/turbine equivalent

 

Cities and residents wont swallow this with current models, why would they accept if from Uber?

Noise was a big issue in Bonython and that was for delivering a few hundred grams, one drone at a time. The Wing promo videos never had sound. If the environmental noise was already loud (e.g. a concrete plant, gravel mine or other light industry) you'd proably not notice a bit more.

 

But, that's not "near where people live". Given this phrase is a key component of Uber Air's business plan, I'm guessing between the physics, civics and legislation they are a non-starter

 

 

[Bruce Tuncks]

When or if autonomous electric drones ever operate, you can bet it will spawn a bunch of ..( words fail me ) who will regard it as a sport to try and crash one. For example, beaming false gps data at one, or loading up the sky ahead with aluminium chaff, or hooking them up with harpoons or nets when they are close to the ground. Not so bad for unmanned delivery drones, very bad for passenger ones.

 

 

[mnewbery]

My reading has shown that in many jurisdictions a pilot on board will be required to supervise the flight, just to meet the current regulations. We all saw how that turned out with self driving cars.

 

 

[fly_tornado]

[antonts]

It's interesting that in the automotive industry we've been told to shut up about autonomous cars, and expect suitable algorithms to take about 30 years

autonomous cars have to work in environment with idiots all around. To predict, not only react to, events like "this sheep ahead will turn right from the leftmost lane with heavy braking", robots can not do this without armour and big guns. In the air everything is much easier, at least untul there will be the same number of users on manual control. Robots can communicate to each other, not a problem, so very dense air traffic can go without any problem, but the single manual-controlled craft and corpses will be carried by carts.

 

Road autonomouse cars just went the wrong way. Instead of making automatisation for simple but time-consuming conditions (drive on highway etc) they try to automatise everything, that is unreal. Only Tesla tries to do something like this with their advanced auto control, but they rely on road marking which is unreliable at all, it can be invisible or be erased any moment due to repairs etc. Robots must rely on robot-readable data, like undersurface cable, roadside static reflectors or something like this. Not everywhere, but for example if Msystem in Sydney will be equipped with such a markings - lot of users will pay for cars which can drive out of city manually, set on M1, autonomousely drive to Campbelltown and again 10 km of manual drive to home. Especially if it will be dedicated line, for robots only.

 

 

[turboplanner]

autonomous cars have to work in environment with idiots all around. To predict, not only react to, events like "this sheep ahead will turn right from the leftmost lane with heavy braking", robots can not do this without armour and big guns. In the air everything is much easier, at least untul there will be the same number of users on manual control. Robots can communicate to each other, not a problem, so very dense air traffic can go without any problem, but the single manual-controlled craft and corpses will be carried by carts.

 

Road autonomouse cars just went the wrong way. Instead of making automatisation for simple but time-consuming conditions (drive on highway etc) they try to automatise everything, that is unreal. Only Tesla tries to do something like this with their advanced auto control, but they rely on road marking which is unreliable at all, it can be invisible or be erased any moment due to repairs etc. Robots must rely on robot-readable data, like undersurface cable, roadside static reflectors or something like this. Not everywhere, but for example if Msystem in Sydney will be equipped with such a markings - lot of users will pay for cars which can drive out of city manually, set on M1, autonomousely drive to Campbelltown and again 10 km of manual drive to home. Especially if it will be dedicated line, for robots only.

Yes, you have to have a datum to tell the computer where to position the car every nano-second of the inputted trip, and lane markers appeared to be accurate datums, but for the reasons you say, in real life situations have been a disaster. A Council decides to resurface the road, and bingo! the datums for that section are black; where is the car supposed to go? I have a Level 1 autonomous car which makes me drive away from the line markers. If I drift over the line the steering wheel shimmies, as sign comes on and it's very uncomfortable until I get back into the lane; tuned my driving accuracy up nicely, but one day there were roadworks ahead and the contractors had painted a new set of lanes over the old ones and veering into a bypass. As I turned to follow the bypass, I got the shimmy, ignored it, and then the steering wheel pulled strongly back towards the original lane. I knew I had to turn the steering wheel back for the bypass, but now there was a solid resistance and I had to use muscle to get it into the bypass. An autonomous vehicle would have gone on in that case, then sharply braked to avoid hitting any barriers, but then, what's next? I tease the designers to come up with an algorithm for this intersection:

 

 

[mnewbery]

I suggest in this article Ben Morgan is pointing out things many have feared. One fear might be evidence of big business greasing the rails when to comes to changing legislation in their favour.

 

[/url]https://aopa.com.au/uber-elevates-our-past-is-our-future/

 

 

[danny_galaga]

Uber has just announced it will be operating passenger aircraft out of Melbourne Airport by 2023.

 

The intent is to take passengers from the airport to "near where they live".

 

The suggestion is that could be the roofs of large shipping centres.

 

The aircraft is a 6 seat (with minute luggage compartment behind the rear seats.)

 

The design is electric with what looks like two vertical props for up down and hover, and a wing, so presumably the props will rotate 90 degrees for travel.

 

The aircraft will have a pilot for the first two or three years while data is being logged but is then expected to be autonomous.

 

The service is being developed in conjunction with CASA.

 

The information comes from several news sources this morning.

 

It's interesting that in the automotive industry we've been told to shut up about autonomous cars, and expect suitable algorithms to take about 30 years to develop, after the increasingly disastrous recent efforts, but those car makers are still showing their electric concept vehicles complete with radiator grilles and engine compartments, and there are people out there touting electric motors as "maintenance free" who obviously have never owned a hair dryer, but who knows, someone could make a breakthrough at any time!

Not sure why you are talking about electric cars. That’s just a different means of propulsion. Whether or not they are autonomous or not is irrelevant to the subject.

 

What is relevant is that Uber loses about one BILLION dollars a year. They have never turned a profit and they rely on new venture capitalists to keep them afloat. This air taxi thing is just another carrot they are dangling in front of their investors to show them they haven’t thrown their money down the toilet.

 

Maybe there will be a service like this one day, but it sure as hell won’t be by Uber...

 

 

[antonts]

A Council decides to resurface the road, and bingo! the datums for that section are black; where is the car supposed to go?

this is the reason why AV must drive only on dedicated controlled roads, where robots clearly know that the road is serviceable (all marking, beacons etc are ok, no obstacles, debris, roarworks in the middle of the lane etc) or refuse to take control if they have no such a confirmation from road authority (radio beacons on entry and along the way). It is impossible to achieve on usual road, but on dedicated lane on highspeed highways - why not? O-bahn in Adelaide works this way with stone-age mechanical steering adn everything is ok, they drive 25tonn buses with 100kmh and almost nobody died.

 

 

[pmccarthy]

Automation of mine haul trucks is complex and needs the dedicated roads.

 

 

[facthunter]

Boeings e VTOL crashed recently. Nev