Transportation

Will We Have Self-Flying Cars Before Self-Driving Cars?


Being the first to release an autonomous/autopilot driving software, Tesla started a self-driving vehicle trend that might shape the future of transportation. While the worldwide adoption of self-driving cars seems to be closer than ever, we might have self-flying cars much sooner.

Sebastian Thrun, the founder of Google’s self-driving team and the CEO of his own self-flying vehicle startup Kitty Hawk, talked about the future of autonomous vehicles at the TechCrunch Disrupt SF. Interestingly, Thrun claims that we might be closer to integrating self-flying vehicles into our transportation systems rather than self-driving cars.

The main reason Thrun believes we are going to succeed in autopilot transportation in the air sooner than on the road is the fact that the airspace has far less obstacles to look out for. While self-driving on the road is challenging because of pedestrians, buildings, and objects, self-flying vehicles could simply travel in a straight line in the air.

“If you go a bit higher in the air then all the difficulties with not hitting stuff like children and bicycles and cars and so on just vanishes . . . Go above the buildings, go above the trees, like go where the helicopters are!” – said Thrun.

Furthermore, Thrun believes that the wide development of autonomous flying vehicles for personal use would impact city structures around the world. For instance, the adoption of such vehicles would require a significant number of vertical take-off helipads to be built in and around each city.

Since personal helicopters are banned in certain cities due to their high noise levels, creating a quiet flying vehicle is the major challenge in this field of aviation.

Since self-flying vehicles could travel in a straight line in the air, they would be far more energy-efficient than self-driving cars on the road. For instance, Thrun believes that self-flying vehicles can cut the costs down to 0.30$ per mile.

Are the Flying-Cars Around the Corner?

The Kitty Hawk aviation startup is not the only company looking at this new and innovative direction. Uber, the transportation giant based in San Francisco, is also building its own ambitious plans for personal air transportation.

With Uber and Kitty Hawk investing in vertical take-off vehicles, we might be looking at a revolutionized type of transportation in the near future. While promoting the idea of simpler and faster air travel, Thrun is trying to distance people from calling these vehicles “flying cars.”

“I personally don’t like the word ‘flying car,’ but it’s very catchy. The technical term is called eVTOL. These are typically electrically propelled vehicles, they can take off and land vertically, eVTOLs, vertical take-off landing, so that you don’t need an airport. And then they fly very much like a regular plane,” explained Sebastian Thurn.



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