Flying car or Tesla?

sevenhills

The company behind AirCar, Klein Vision, says the prototype has taken about two years to develop and cost "less than 2m euros" (£1.7m) in investment.

Anton Rajac, an adviser and investor in Klein Vision, said if the company could attract even a small percentage of global airline or taxi sales, it would be hugely successful.

In 2019, consultant company Morgan Stanley predicted the sector could be worth $1.5trillion (£1tn) by 2040.

How much is the company worth compared to Tesla, this flying car could be massive, if Government allow it.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-57651843

Type_45

sevenhills said:

 if Government allow it.

This is the key.

The city I live in is very candid in it's views that it wants an end to car ownership.

Grumpy_chap

sevenhills said:

if Government allow it.

That approval is likely far, far away.
At present, the Government are struggling with permissions for drones, electric scooters and driving assistance technology.
All the while elf'n'safety leaves regulators running scared of everything, we are perhaps more likely to see flying pigs than flying cars!
Ever increasing litigation society won't help either.

Biggest killer of this product is that the AirCar, is equipped with a BMW engine and runs on regular petrol-pump fuel.  Governments and Local Authorities everywhere are totally against even ground-based cars equipped with ICE, let alone facilitating some new technology.  It also seems from the article that the AirCar requires a runway to get airborne so will negate much of the potential opportunity.

Type_45

We serfs will be walking around and catching public transport have their modes of transport (be that air, sea or land).

MX5huggy

It’s not really a flying car, more a driving plane. It needs a runway, a pilots license, all the certification of an airplane etc, then you’re going to drive it around where it can get dinged  by Mr Miggins in his 40 year old Fiesta it’s just a toy for the rich.

There’s a guy on YouTube with a 8 or 10 bladed drone that he stands on flys about, looks lethal  develop that in to a personal transportation solution. 

csgohan4

I think the likelihood of the future of back to the future 2 is highly unlikely in our life time to be honest.  Sharing the skies with Planes is going to be headache for air traffic control. 

solidpro

Does 2 things not very well. What's wrong with a plane and a car? I wouldn't buy a fishing rod that also is a net. Or infact I wouldn't buy some shoes which is also a hat.

I also know that if my Tesla ever broke down mid-journey, it isn't likely to culminate in me hurtling towards some house roofs or a primary school at 200mph - think of the insurance policy if it did.

Malthusian

Type_45 said:

The city I live in is very candid in it's views that it wants an end to car ownership.

So what? It's a flying car, what they gonna do if I fly over their council office, shoot me down with ack-ack guns?

You may scoff but it's only the "can't touch muh bitcoin" argument with flying cars instead of crypto.

BBC said: Anton Rajac, an adviser and investor in Klein Vision, said if the company could attract even a small percentage of global airline or taxi sales, it would be hugely successful.

Haven't we had enough of the "If only 1% of people in the UK die of coronavirus, that's 700,000 people" school of statistics for one year?

"If we make 1% of trillions of dollars that's tens of billions of dollars" isn't an industry insight, it's a statement of the bleeding obvious (unless you're wowed by Key Stage 1 maths). The important questions, in an investment context, are how many people have placed pre-orders for their flying cars and what rate of sales growth is realistic if they work.

In 2019, consultant company Morgan Stanley predicted the sector could be worth $1.5trillion (£1tn) by 2040.

Morgan Stanley is also a bank. How much have they invested in AirCar and its rivals? If the answer is "not a lot", why do they have so little faith in their predictions?

How much did Morgan Stanley predict the Internet sector would be worth in 1980? What was their prediction for global coronavirus vaccine sales in 2000?

MattMattMattUK

Have you seen how bad the majority of people are at driving? Now imagine the consequences of that for flying, if you clip a wheel on a curb then you scuff the alloy, if you misjudge width or parking then you scuff a bumper. In a plane if you scuff a wing on take off or landing you flip the plane, if you scuff a wing on a passing tree then you crash, the best case scenario is that you only break lots of bones, with death being a fairly high possibility. 

It took me 18 months to get my PPL-H so I can fly a helicopter and it is similar for a plane. The level of skill that has to be demonstrated is far higher than for a car because the outcome when getting something wrong is far higher. Personally I think probably more than half of road users are not capable of driving to an acceptable standard and should be banned from the road, I would imagine even fewer of them should be anywhere near the controls of something that flys.

Steve182

Foreign trainee pilots from all over Europe frequently came to the south east of England (pre covid) to experience congested skies that they cannot experience closer to home. I guess if anything like this really takes off (pun intended) it will need to be completely or almost completely autonomous. The multimillionaires who buy them will likely live in already heavily congested airspace. 

Adyinvestment

I don't see how logistically anything that needs a runway will be successful. If this form of travel were to become mainstream it would have to take off vertically.


And anything Morgan Stanley say should be taken with a pinch of salt, their PR department must be huge with all the garbage click bait they spew out!