The Barron's Penta article The Next Wave in Flight: Flying Vehicles You Can Summon With Your Phone covers eVTOLs, which are electric vertical take-off and landing vehicles.
As the article points out, electric flying vehicles have a number of major advantages over traditional helicopters. They're substantially quieter, need much less maintenance and are easier and safer to fly.
They're also projected to be dramatically cheaper to own and operate. Key quote from the article:
While light single-engine turbine helicopters cost anywhere from $1 million to $4 million, have a distinctive and pronounced noise signature, and hourly direct operating costs of $360 to $644, eVTOLs are envisioned to cost anywhere from $70,000 to $250,000, emit half the noise or less of a helicopter, and cost 75% less per hour to operate.
Based on these cost projections, Uber thinks they can keep eVTOL passenger fares as low as $1.32 per seat mile. They plan to start testing their air taxi service - called Uber Elevate - in Dallas and Dubai in 2020.
Other companies are also investing in eVTOLs, including big companies such as Bell Helicopter, Toyota, Airbus and Boeing. Most of these companies say public testing of their eVTOLs will happen in the 2019 to 2023 timeframe.
The picture below shows Airbus's eVTOL on it's first full-scale test flight.
According to the article, in total "more than 50 companies have already publicly invested $1 billion specifically in eVTOL vehicles and research ...".
We've pointed out in the past that flying cars have been predicted to be just a few years away since at least 1917. That's when both Ford and Curtis Aircraft released their first flying car prototypes.
But this time finally looks to be different.
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