Alexis wrote:
But for vehiclea like the Lillium, – without any gliding capabilites and probably mostly operated in cities – the situation would different.
The Lillium should have a glide ratio not much worse than a Cirrus. It has a main wing and a canard that produce lift (the canard probably not in the prototype that flew).
Peter wrote:
That’s a different proposition but not very useful for air taxis in a city environment.
Useful enough to get started. What about a Hudson River scenic tour. 15 minutes for $200. Tickets for the next 2 years sold out in 5 minutes. Initially with life vests and rescue teams in boats. The possibilities are endless, I am sure the right applications can be found to get this technology bootstrapped and in the not too far future we’ll be Luc Besson all over.
The Lillium should have a glide ratio not much worse than a Cirrus. It has a main wing and a canard that produce lift (the canard probably not in the prototype that flew).
Ok, I was not awar of that. But from looking at the design i would say the glide angle will be steeper …
It will be done, for sure. If you look at what toy drones can do today … it all depends on the available batteries. The guy who develops the battery that makes this possible and gives the Tesla a 1000 km range will be the next super-billionaire .
Alexis wrote:
If I understood that correctly the Tesla in which i entered my destination might has calculated that trip based on the preceding consumption, e.g. driving style. Is that correct? It’s possible that the dealer’s demonstrator was driven hard … and that this is the reason why the result of the calculation was so bad?
Yes that’s exactly what would happen. The demonstrators are often driven hard, the thing about the Tesla that brings a smile is the acceleration. It is extraordinary. Unfortunately those smiles cost miles (in range)
Copied, thanks!
Looking fwd to the test drive.
On my recent rip to San Sebastian 95% was done on autopilot and I didn’t touch the controls. With some extra servos, autoland might be achievable, but I don’t see how a robot could execute the instructions from Biarritz ATC. This seems an almost insurmountable hurdle to robotic commercial flight.
Simon
simon32 wrote:
I don’t see how a robot could execute the instructions from Biarritz ATC. This seems an almost insurmountable hurdle to robotic commercial flight.
Biarritz ATC would be replaced by robots as well! And the Gendarmerie de l’Air academy closed of course.
I’m not a big fan of flying cars or air taxis either, but there’s something that ‘ticks’ in this Lilium company. The thing actually flies and it’s German for starters. Just so happens that experts like us on this forum tend to estimate development times of new innovation much more longer than it actually ends up being. Again totally agree with all of the good points wrt software, GPS jamming, ATC, etc. but that’s actually exactly what keeps innovation from happening. That’s the old stuff.
What I still don’t get is weather. What will happen when an autonomous aerial vehicle hits a nice downdraft or the wind is suddenly gusting to 35 kts on landing? Or icing…
I’d bet my pension that these Lilium guys don’t give a damn about the air taxi concept as such. It’s needed for publicity and to get the funding. These guys are driven simply because they want to develop something really cool that flies. After all, what’s the last big thing in aviation before this?
This is fine so long as you aren’t an investor 
The usual pattern with these things is that the enterpreneur gets a load of money in, produces a load of flashy CGI stuff, and keeps doing more CGI and sometimes building prototypes, while the money funds his family (kids in private schools, etc). After a bit the original funding is spent so new investors are invited to come on board, and after a few of these cycles the original investors’ stake is diluted so much that nothing short of [insert the current richest person in the world] buying the company for $1BN will produce any return for them. I have sunk about 20k into things like this, over many years, and you nearly always lose 100%. The other day I heard that a 15k investment (from c. 15 years ago) is now worth £0.00.
So the Q becomes: yes we need “fun projects” which push the boundaries even if – for simple practical reasons – they never produce anything actually useful, but how should this be funded? Maybe the EU nees to set up a “Fun Projects Funding Agency”. Whoops; they already have! It’s called EASA 
IMHO anyone who understands “technology” will immediately realise that there are so many challenges in this which are doing to be really difficult to solve if you are going to transport people in any realistic environment. It’s like the Amazon drone delivery proposition but much much harder; I bet you that will never work either except in the most narrow scenarios, and that has the huge advantage of not carrying anything more valuable than some package(s).
Peter wrote:
I have sunk about 20k into things like this, over many years, and you nearly always lose 100%.
Maybe has to do with your choice of investments? Certainly been working much better for others… Your view of startup entrepreneurs is very cynical and simply untrue for the vast majority. There is stupid money out there but in this case with Lillium, the investors certainly are not of that sort.
I think you are wrong in your assessment of this project or the general category and underestimate what technology can do today and what it will be able to do in the near future.
ToniK wrote:
I’d bet my pension that these Lilium guys don’t give a damn about the air taxi concept as such.
I disagree, air taxis are a major opportunity and have the potential to be disruptive. Self flying is a niche market and flying with a pilot makes it more expensive and reduces the payload. There are so many use cases for this technology that you only have to define the field of application narrowly enough to make it possible with the then current technology. They don’t have to build 50 million and replace all other means of transport within one week to be successful — they can start small somewhere on this planet.
Peter wrote:
IMHO anyone who understands “technology” will immediately realise
Sounds like the board meeting of Nokia where they concluded that the iPhone was a joke…
I used to work for Digital Equipment Corp., at the time (1988) the world’s second largest computer company with a revenue of almost USD 10 bn. Ken Olsen, who had founded DEC was sure that “nobody would need a computer at home”.
