Could it be we are at the one-in-one-out phase of the budding eVTOL market? This week, the outtie is KittyHawk, an early and well-funded entrant into what is imagined as the Urban Air Mobility market. The closure is significant because the company was well along with a couple of designs and seemed to have investment staying power from Google mega-billionaire Larry Page. But the field is crowded and ripe for a shakeout, and UAM is still little more than a concept.
Very true, and hey, you never know. After all, what’s emerged here on Earth that way is kinda impressive. Of course, if we knew the full number of dead ends, we might wonder if it was worth the wait.
Whoever comes up with a battery/motor/vehicle combo that makes eVTOL practical will be richer than the 10 richest people in the world put together. I’m betting it’ll never happen.
“And you know what, good for them, because one or some of these projects will eventually break through.“ actually disagree here (depending on your definition of breaking through). If you’re referring to a unicorn in VC terms. But in aviation there is no such thing. In tech sure. There are plenty of examples of billion dollar ideas. Anytime you have to have people and or pilots in a position to plummet to the earth you will not have a unicorn. If the liability won’t kill you, the very shrunken market that actually materializes will be proof that it was about the same size as the paraglider market size. No mass market here and no Uber-like growth chart. Hope I’m wrong, but I just don’t see the market here.
My definition of breaking through is getting past the steep barriers to entry and achieving a successful, sustainable business. And of course it has happened in aviation. What do you think Cirrus is? And Diamond. I covered both from the outset and both were given little chance of success. But both achieved the right combination of timing, product features, performance and marketing expertise to make it over the hump.
I think it’s inevitable that this will happen in the distributed electric power space, eventually. Not with hoverbikes, but with some kind of useful aircraft.
All significant advances in aircraft were a result of revolutionary advances in power plants. The Wright brothers engine made powered flight possible for the first time. Rotary engines made airplanes militarily useful, radial engines made practical airliners, and jet engines enabled revolutionary increases in performance.
The question is what is the next revolutionary power plant ? Personally think it is going to be electric but what will be the energy source, battery, hybrid battery, hydrogen, something else? That is where there is much uncertainty with likely many failed attempts before someone comes up with the secret sauce.
All ya gotta do is look at Icon which I’d closely view as this hoverbike. For just over $100K, buyers were going to be able to zip around in a little high tech auto-like seaplane. Look where that went. Cirrus – on the other hand … and as you say – started as two driven brothers in Baraboo, WI with a vision, the good luck to time their entry, a market ready for the picking and a modicum of good luck. The product they produced isn’t a toy but, rather, a useful transportation machine. THAT’s the key. A usable product at a price the market is willing to bear.
I guess what I was trying to say was that any company that wants to mainstream an aviation product for the masses including non~pilots is in for a ride. Cirrus or any other ga doesn’t count b/c they were never targeting the masses. They were after the existing and new ga pilots. Folks like icon that think showing at the auto show in Detroit to entice people who would never ever have flown ga, but somehow will buy their airplane are deluded. They will entice some but those folks were toying around with the idea of getting their ppl or sport pilot certificate anyways. Mainstream people are scared to death of anything capable of falling out of the sky.
Paul mentions it only in passing … pilot certificate. But there’s a lot more here than just rider (?) qualification that those companies and their investors seem to conveniently ignore.
There’s no way in this reality that vehicles of this kind will simply be allowed to buzz around whichever way they like. There’s a whole slew of regulations that needs to be created. Are those things meant to follow roads? If yes, how far above ground? There are obstacles like power lines, traffic lights, underpasses… If you need to follow the line of cars in front of you, what’s the point?
Or will they be allowed to criss-cross the landscape freely? What about private property or installations with restricted access? How can they protect themselves from unauthorised overflight? How do you enforce those rules? Are cops going to go on patrol in the air and force offenders to land, like a pair of F-18s?
The only solution here would be to require these vehicles to adhere to MSAs and make them part of the rules of the air rather than the ground. So now you’re sitting out in the open, on a vehicle with no glide or autorotation capability (as far as we know), with spinning bone shredders all around you, 1000 ft above a city. Or your sharing the narrow airspace between the skyscrapers and airplane territory with sightseeing helicopters and that other miracle-in-waiting - unmanned drone taxis.
Economically, aviation industries are not in a thriving market, and it will not improve for the foreseeable future. These innovations are fantastic, and we should applaud the efforts of such firms, but the timing is wrong for marketing such expensive, non-essential hardware.
“If it’s hydrocarbon powered by an H2 engine, it surely ought to run more than 30 minutes. The specs further say it has a battery…” Surely from that you would have to conclude its a hydrogen fuel-cell-powered machine…?
“How do you make a small fortune in aviation?.. start with a large one”.
Like a few others, my bet is the tech challenge is a…challenge, but it pales in comparison to getting any significant fraction of the population interested in actually sitting in one, much less repeating the experience after a windy, stormy hop to a “lily pad”…and if that doesn’t end well for the wealthy early adopters on board and/or innocent bystanders below, the lawyers, insurance industry, media, legislators, regulators and your Aunt Mabel will all weigh in to change whatever assumptions facilitated the initial “success”. Perhaps we’ll get a preview if (when?) one of the space tourist rides goes off the rails…
For routine proof of market size…what look do you get from the majority of your friends/family when you offer a flight?
Another Toldyouso. “Distributed electric power is not going to suddenly vanish as we veer enthusiastically back toward fossil fuels.” Yes, it already has. And most thinking people have never swayed from supporting our wonderful fossil fuels, except crony hucksters taking advantage of an administration controlled by enviro fanatics, themselves fueled by millions from Putin and the CCP. The old confused man in the WH rubber stamps anything put before him during his 2 hours of daily “work” between frequent naps and calling 80 million patriotic working Americans a threat to the country.
Good morning. Don’t forget that the launch (piloted by a chimp) that proceeded John Glenn’s first flight….blew up. America’s greatness has always been as a result of its brave pioneers. We owe everything to the imaginations, creativity, and guts of those that were not afraid to take a chance.
“… it surely ought to run more than 30 minutes.” - Think of it as a courtesy extended to the operator. You can see how bad the “rider/pilot” was trying to manage the willies. After 30 minutes, the risk of the operator peeing ones’ self would seem inevitable.