"So why would a real estate firm invest in a company that focuses on getting people from JFK Airport to Manhattan in five minutes?"
Uber and various tech companies have been looking to change the ways we deal with transportation. Cheaper, on-demand taxis and autonomous vehicles are already on the road. But what's the next step?
Real estate firm Colony Northstar and various other notable investors including Airbus have contributed $38 Million to back Blade, an aviation company known for giving helicopter rides. With the support of the real estate giant, Blade plans on taking the taxi race into the sky by providing the infrastructure to do so:
While the technology is pretty much ready to make this happen, one major stumbling block — aside from safety regulation — is infrastructure. Flying cars or air taxis may not need roads for the most part, but they do need somewhere to take off from and land. And that is where New York-based Blade is looking to invest.
Imagine landing pads instead of bus stops. With real estate expertise to support it in creating the infrastructure, Blade could be the next step in creating a world that looks a lot more like something from a science fiction movie (Blade --> Blade Runner?)
So...
Now that the infrastructure is in the works, do you think flying cars will hit the market soon or do you think safety regulation is a bigger problem?
Can you see real estate investment playing a large role in the "urban air mobility" market?
If available, would you take a flying car to work?
They had helicopter taxis in the 60s in NYC, with stops on highrise roofs
I'm wondering whether to drive a flying car you would need a pilots license. I sure as shit wouldn't hop in a flying car with someone who couldn't operate an aircraft. Although it's a car, and therefore, a smaller vehicle than an airplane, if someone couldn't fly it properly and crashes there's a 99% chance we're dead after ricocheting off a building and/or crashing into the ground and exploding everyone walking on the streets.
I see this being a mode of transportation that is used as much as someone uses a helicopter to get from Point A to Point B. It's a luxury that the wealthier can use to get where they please but it's not viable enough to commercialize.
I'm open to disagreements though.
I tend to agree with you. In theory, ideas such as these always seem like a wonderful idea; however, for a lot of "new age" technology, I feel that no one ever does enough research on the downside risk involved.
Exactly. Companies are doing it just to do it. Having the ability to say "We invented the flying car" is worth more to them than the amount of time and money it takes to develop something that may never be sold.
On a broader scope, I think that is a problem with a lot of companies and ideas.
We are basically at a point know where anything someone can think of can actually be produced. That doesn't mean it should be produced. The problem I think is that companies invest so much into a product, then that becomes the only product on the market and people are forced to purchase it.
For example, I think about IoT and everything connected. Do we "really" need a connected microwave, toaster and coffee maker? Probably not, but once manufacturers start making them because they can, they want a return on investment. Another example is iPhones, I know AAPL needs to turn a profit, but the new phone each year really isn't that far of an advance from the old one, but the old ones operate poorly with the new software.
Absolutely agree. To expand on your point, once companies create these products that no one really needs, competitors then come out of the woodworks because they believe they're on the forefront of a new innovative paradigm when in reality they're just producing junk.
I believe Peter Thiel has a good point when he talks about horizontal vs. vertical expansion. We need to be innovative but in the right way. IoT is a prime example of horizontal expansion and I'd say Apple has reached that same point. e.g. releasing nearly the same phone every year but with minor aesthetic differences.
Perhaps a more appropriate strategy for Apple would be to release a phone every other year (might still be too much) and in that gap year try to create something new and different.
I get that some things require baby steps, so they need to take those to get from point A to ultimate point B, but sometimes I think company's just go after low hanging fruit. Meaning, I get we cannot innovate the bike one day and next everyone has a personal space ship, but do we really need a fridge with cameras on the inside?
It's like the idea of, if a person from 1900 woke up in 1960, the world would be way different, but if a person from 1960 woke up in 2020, the world won't be too far off from what they knew.
But if you're Apple, you're not selling technology anymore, you're selling a lifestyle. There's a reason people line up for hours to buy the newest iPhone, and it isn't because they are excited to have those microscopic improvements. It's a status symbol. As well ask why we invest money in nice clothes or watches or anything like that. Apple's brilliance is in it's marketing, and they've made the iPhone a status symbol. Good on them for it. I don't even think they'd argue the annual phone releases are about technological improvements.
It sounds like a fairy tale - to get to work and home without traffic jams.
Lmfao my dad invested years ago when he first got his private pilot's license into a company called TerrraFugia (or something similar to that spelling) for an investor's edition of a flying car. Good luck inventing a realistic one that could actually fit on roads / highways + get it's safety regulations by every agency involved + a pilot's license + places to land (there is no way they would fit enough thrust to create a VTOL aircraft).
I have somewhat the same issues. Not to be pessimistic because I'm sure (hopefully) the people working on this are way smarter than me, but what happens when one crashes into something, or falls out of the sky, fuel prices?
I'm sure that's the same problems when someone first heard of the airplane.
Side note, not to hijack the trend, but I have the same questions everytime someone talks about the self-driving career.
I have a strong conviction this will come to fruition in the next 5-10 years as more and more well-capitalized firms and investors continue to back players within this space. The cities of Dallas and Los Angeles have both committed to having these vehicles operate in a test setting by 2020 and commercially by 2023. I think we are at a minimum 7-10 years away from full-scale operation, yet these vehicles have the ability to fix a lot of traffic issues that otherwise would cost billions in infrastructure expenditure. Every major tech firm (Google, Amazon, Apple) firm and aeronautical firm (NASA, Boeing, Airbus, etc) are backing this space.
Huge security risk, unless you make sure every pilot is 100% patriot
It looks like they'll have pilots in the beginning then move to autonomous in due time thus making them more profitable and in my humble opinion, safer.
That sounds more scary to me, what about Russian/North Korea hackers?
Helicopters are widely used in every major metro and using antiquated technology that are quite susceptible to wind speeds. I'd be much more concerned with helicopters. I'd imagine the technology applied here is much more advanced for not only with the vehicle, but also with the network itself.
A number of things:
1) These concepts are predicated upon autonomous technology; in order to be economically viable, there will be no pilot. What you'll have is pre-programmed routes that aircraft won't deviate from. From a technological standpoint, it should be insanely easy.
2) All or almost all of these concepts are based on electric engines, which will radically reduce aircraft noise. There is no viable concept that could use an ICE engine due to noise.
3) The major hurdle now isn't technological (tech is minor hurdle, but still a hurdle); the major hurdle is regulatory. The U.S. skyways are HIGHLY regulated. It will take a Manhattan Project to get the federal gov't to release its grip to allow for innovation in flight. Even now, the feds have made it harder--if not impossible--to flight share. I don't see the feds loosening their vice grip on the skyways anytime soon.
4) The second major hurdle is autonomous cars, which, ironically (due to their complexity), have a much lower regulatory hurdle to overcome since NHTSA is on board (no pun intended) with innovation in automobiles while the FAA is a backward, bureaucratic embarrassment. If autonomous ground vehicles revolutionize ground transportation with inexpensive, luxury, on-demand cars that drive efficiently and lessen the burden on traffic, demand for flight may never reach critical mass to become ubiquitous. I think by the time flying cars overcome the regulatory burden, autonomous cars will have preemptively rendered the flying car obsolete except for a few wealthy people (like today with helicopters).
Maybe in in the year 2118, but in the near future I don't see this happening, outside the ultra rich who can fly their helicopter from the top of their building to their front lawn.
You can't even fly your drone (legally) without it being registered (for recreation with certain restrictions) or you have a Remote Pilot Certificate (license): https://www.faa.gov/uas/getting_started/
I highly doubt the FAA would loosen the reigns on this for autonomous cars. Also, even though it seems like the sky is a wide open expanse and free-for-all, it's not. There are defined routes which all aircraft (personal and commercial) must follow. Air traffic controllers monitor every single flight. You have to file your flights with ATC before you take off. Deviations from the flight path and unknown aircraft are serious issues. Why do you think they send fighter jets up for even mistaken transgressions, especially close to a city?
While the technology is probably there, I see this being a political, and feasibility issue more than anything. I just see this being so messy. You can't just run up your Aston Martin on the highway and take off or helicopter up at a red light on 5th ave. You'd probably need a defined "airport" (or landing pad as described in the OP) that one would presumably have to commute to/from. Which also doesn't seem to alleviate the original issue of traffic.
Other cities, it might be possible. But in D.C. I'd put money on this never happening, again at least in our lifetimes. I know pilots who fly in and out of DCA and they said it's the worst because of all the additional security measures and flight restrictions due to the White House/Capitol, which for obvious reasons makes sense.
Like those who made comparisons to companies like Apple, at what point do we take a step back from "this is the greatest new technology ever!" to fixing the logical infrastructure needs and truly planning out our urban development. As I reread this, it seems like a rant, so I do apologize as it's not intended to be.
Feel free to shoot down these thoughts, this is certainly an interesting debate.
I definitely agree with you on the FAA.
I do think the VTOL planners are largely not envisioning an air free-for-all. I think they are envisioning landing pads on top of high-rise buildings and pre-programmed flight paths (from building A in this neighborhood to building B in that neighborhood, or from this building in Richmond, VA to that building in Charlotte, NC). I'd also imagine that they are envisioning relatively low altitude flying so that they're not actually occupying the same airspace as traditional airliners.
I'm completely with you on D.C., which suuuuucks. I can't imagine them ever letting aircraft get within a country mile of important D.C. sites until or unless there is substantial (years) of demonstrated flight safety.
Just to add to my agreement with you, the FAA is going to be so bad about this (our prediction) that this technology will likely rise in places like China and Saudi Arabia and the UAE way before it comes here or Europe. There will probably be a time in the next 20 years where we'll look with envy upon those countries because of the cool infrastructure they have.
May I PM you?
I'd imagine Uber, and all their partner companies, wouldn't be dedicating such resources if they did not believe it was both (i) economically viable (ii) and with a high degree of certainty forsee a viable path to establish a regulatory framework that would permit these vehicles. Thoughts?
But are they really dedicating substantial resources or are they dedicating ancillary resources to this project? The amount of money going into autonomous automobiles is truly enormous; I don't know if that's necessarily the case with VTOL.
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