Anyone else tired of hearing about eVTOL?

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fasteddie

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Fasteddie
This recent article from Flying magazine is almost too absurd to summarize. Numerous different eVTOL companies going public, with valuations in the Billions. And yet, very few of them have produced anything approaching real, no-kidding, flying hardware. Most only have some snazzy CGI renderings, and mockups that look like Teslas with props.

When will the madness stop?
 
When all the investors are broke. Until then, expect to see a new wave of the latest craze about every 5-10 years. Everyone thinks they have the magic sauce. Probably none of them do.
 
When investors dry-up which may be a while. I am guessing there are lots of either free money, government loan guarantees or tax advantaged money provisions (e.g. tax credits) in the infrastructure bill recently passed or will be in the upcoming budget that will continue to support these endeavors. Someone will eventually produce a commercial model but I think we are years away from seeing them put into practical use. Hell - Tesla still can’t get a car to drive itself reliably. What one earth makes us think once of these will fly autonomously.
 
fasteddie said:
Flying magazine is almost too absurd to summarize
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I miss Flying, but I don't miss the current iteration of it. I read it religiously all through the late 90s and up through 2015.. but it's just different now. NOT. A. FAN. Martha Lunken and Peter Garrison are the only interesting parts of it. Interestingly the COPA magazine ($60/yr) is great.. not at all 'snobby' and just good flying stories from pilots

fasteddie said:
valuations in the Billions
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I don't understand it.. I feel like I live in some bizarro world. It's not just 'eVtol' there are countless absurd app ideas making it through multi million dollar funding rounds.. I don't understand it. Seems like all you need is fancy marketing, buzzwords, and a 2004 level CGI mock up. It's almost a guarantee if you include the words "sustainable" "renewable" "blockchain" you'll be headed to a multi-million(billion?) dollar payout
 
Why does a 1980 Cessna with fresh engine cost $200k? Why can you get a 20yr loan at 2.5% from Van Bartel?! Why are valuations at near all time hughs on the stock market?

Too much money and no place to park it.
 
They will fall out of vogue when people realize that an aircraft that is supposed to operate in urban environments and can neither glide, nor autorotate, is monumentally stupid on several levels.
 
Paul V said:
They will fall out of vogue when people realize that an aircraft that is supposed to operate in urban environments and can neither glide, nor autorotate, is monumentally stupid on several levels.
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Someone will be along shortly to tell you that you’re wrong.
 
fasteddie said:
This recent article from Flying magazine is almost too absurd to summarize. Numerous different eVTOL companies going public, with valuations in the Billions. And yet, very few of them have produced anything approaching real, no-kidding, flying hardware. Most only have some snazzy CGI renderings, and mockups that look like Teslas with props.

When will the madness stop?
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.

I completely agree .

I am not against electric powered transportation and modern experimentation ... electrics have always had a function in the industrial world .

Some of the early 1900's cars were electric so nothing new here other than improved batteries ... even things like the Tesla car's excellent motor was invented by Nikola Tesla himself around 1890.

Even Arthur Young , who invented the Bell Helicopter was test flying electric powered drone-type models in 1929.

And fasteddie is correct when he says a lot of today's announcements are mostly , pop , snazz , and sizzle spiced with marketing claims that electric power will save the planet and stop global warming and save humanity.

There are enough investors in the global warming religion to fund these attempts , but in a few more years they will come to the same realization as the early pioneers did .... a 6 pound container of gasoline will produce as much useable energy as 400-500 pounds of battery . And in aviation weight has always been the deciding factor.

.
arthur young electric helicopter drone model.jpg
 
I Have not paid much attention to these aircraft because it will take a Marine platoon to get me in one of them. My concerns:
What about emergency procedures. Can these critters maintain flight after a bird strike? OEI? Fire? My very first emergency was an electrical fire caused by a battery thermal runaway. Big charred hole in the fuselage. Many events with the electric system issues. Solved by a pilot. Can these things maintain separation with certificated air craft? Do these things have a height/velocity diagram in the flight manual like a certified A/C? How are pilots/ operators certified? Would they go to Flight Safety or equivalant? Medical certification? Can they mix with LSA's without transponders or ADSB? What procedures when the forecast says "Icing possible." Do they even have ice protection? If passengers go rogue, who deals with it? On and on.
 
I suspect some of the companies public offerings will be a pump and dump stock.
 
I hadn't paid much attention to any of it in fact didn't really know it was even a thing until a few months ago when, out of nowhere, they announced that five very large hangars were going to be built at my sleepy little county airport to accommodate the development of something called Urban Air Mobility and that a sector of the airfield was going to be designated as a UAV test area. I kind of blew it off as "yea, right" but sure enough, a few weeks later the bulldozers and trucks were out there and the frames of the first two buildings are already up.

So I did some research and discovered that over the past ten or twelve years a few billion dollars have quietly been funneled into this sector and that there are at least a dozen or more prominent startups perusing it. I'd say the two top contenders right now are Lilium in Germany and Joby here in the States. They both have flying prototypes with at least a thousand or more hours of test flight time each. Those two seem to have the whole idea worked out the best as they are not like quad-copters but winged aircraft that take off and land vertically. So rather that going to lengths to design them to efficiently hover they seem to realize that in the prescribed mission of a 30-60 minute flight there will only be about 30-60 seconds of actual VTOL and the rest will be cruise.

But I agree it's a lot of pie-in-the-sky. Even the working, flying models show flight in clear, calm, pristine conditions. Almost like a child's fantasy-land. They claim they are going to be like a flying Uber and eventually pilotless and autonomous. But, just like self driving cars, maybe they should first prove to us that they can make a spellchecker that works.
 
Yes, tired of it. But they don't have to actually be safe to be marketable. They just have to have the appearance of being safe. Like self driving cars. They drive under trailers and into fire trucks, but nobody seems to mind too much.
 
Get me a weather balloon and a bicycle powered fan and I'll outperform and out endurance all the mythical EVTOL. They're as realistic as a flying car. I got over them 5 years ago when it became clear to me it's just a fairy tale...like the flying car. Theres a few out there 50 years after they were thought up, but incredibly impractical.

Frankly the whole electric craze I'm pretty much done with. Where does most of our electric come from? Burning coal and gas. Except in Illinois where we lead the country in percentage of nuclear power. And even we're kicking it to the curb for no other reason than because it has a stigma. Solar and wind are great, but they're unreliable and not very productive. What happens to that lithium once the batteries are used up? They don't really have a way to recycle and reuse it yet as it's cheaper to mine the lithium ore, put it in a slurry, and wait 18 months for the water to evaporate. Think we have a chip shortage? Wait until the lithium battery shortage kicks in.

Somebody will eventually crack the hydrogen fuel cell. The lithium battery is a stopgap until something better comes up.
 
Silvaire said:
I hadn't paid much attention to any of it in fact didn't really know it was even a thing until a few months ago when, out of nowhere, they announced that five very large hangars were going to be built at my sleepy little county airport to accommodate the development of something called Urban Air Mobility and that a sector of the airfield was going to be designated as a UAV test area. I kind of blew it off as "yea, right" but sure enough, a few weeks later the bulldozers and trucks were out there and the frames of the first two buildings are already...
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Wait, towns will let us build hangars!? I'm sold. Let's go eV-whatever! Take that money and build me a hangar I can use when they bankrupt.
 
I understand the appeal to broad journalism. Greenism has many adherents.

But I don’t understand the breathless, uncritical prose from the likes of FLYING and AOPA Pilot. Their readers are actual pilots, with about as much interest in Urban Air Mobility as the readers of Hot Rod would have in moving sidewalks.
 
Racerx said:
Get me a weather balloon and a bicycle powered fan and I'll outperform and out endurance all the mythical EVTOL. They're as realistic as a flying car. I got over them 5 years ago when it became clear to me it's just a fairy tale...like the flying car. Theres a few out there 50 years after they were thought up, but incredibly impractical.

Frankly the whole electric craze I'm pretty much done with. Where does most of our electric come from? Burning coal and gas. Except in Illinois where we lead the country in percentage of nuclear power. And even we're kicking it to the curb for no other reason than because it has a stigma. Solar and wind are great, but they're unreliable and not very productive. What happens to that lithium once the batteries are used up? They don't really have a way to recycle and reuse it yet as it's cheaper to mine the lithium ore, put it in a slurry, and wait 18 months for the water to evaporate. Think we have a chip shortage? Wait until the lithium battery shortage kicks in.

Somebody will eventually crack the hydrogen fuel cell. The lithium battery is a stopgap until something better comes up.
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Where are you going to get the hydrogen from?
 
OneCharlieTango said:
I understand the appeal to broad journalism. Greenism has many adherents.

But I don’t understand the breathless, uncritical prose from the likes of FLYING and AOPA Pilot. Their readers are actual pilots, with about as much interest in Urban Air Mobility as the readers of Hot Rod would have in moving sidewalks.
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They gotta fill all those pages with something.
 
Way tired.
Even if they do whatever they think they want to do, they still have a solution with no real problem, and the energy density isn't there.
 
So let's not experiment with anything since we can't do everything perfectly yet.
 
https://www.sevendaysvt.com/vermont...gh-for-electric-aviation/Content?oid=32957639

Some people like to innovate, create, and aviate. Some people like to read about it, learn more, and hope that something new, better, less expensive, less polluting, less noisy comes out of it. It doesn’t make sense to conceptualize the same old designs that have been around since Orville won the first STOL contest. So many pilots here love their Lopresti cowls, flapgap seals, VGs, speed mods, STOL cuffs, Q-tip props, as long as the manufacturer makes it for THEIR airplane. God forbid anyone tries something different. It’s aviation. What’s not to love?
 
Salty said:
People are stupid.

A conclusion I came to while still in college. Not a specific person, but people in general are stupid, all inclusive.
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Could be your company. That little map explains a lot. ;)
 
Lachlan said:
https://www.sevendaysvt.com/vermont...gh-for-electric-aviation/Content?oid=32957639

Some people like to innovate, create, and aviate. Some people like to read about it, learn more, and hope that something new, better, less expensive, less polluting, less noisy comes out of it. It doesn’t make sense to conceptualize the same old designs that have been around since Orville won the first STOL contest. So many pilots here love their Lopresti cowls, flapgap seals, VGs, speed mods, STOL cuffs, Q-tip props, as long as the manufacturer makes it for THEIR airplane. God forbid anyone tries something different. It’s aviation. What’s not to love?
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You think these will be less expensive, and less noisy? ROTFL. Good one.
 
Lachlan said:
Could be your company. That little map explains a lot. ;)
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I've lived in 7 states and 2 countries, in pretty much every demographic of the US, and have traveled to all but 4 of the states and a dozen countries. I think you're probably wrong.
The map is where I've landed as PIC.
 
Salty said:
I've lived in 7 states and 2 countries, in pretty much every demographic of the US, and have traveled to all but 4 of the states and a dozen countries. I think you're probably wrong.
The map is where I've landed as PIC.
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I must certainly be wrong. I’m stoopid, right?

I would bet that an airliner-sized VTOL (with any power configuration currently in prototype testing) would generate more dB than a Jet-A turbofan. But a GA sized eVTOL is gong to surprise you. That’s one reason to read about them whenever you get the chance. There are new twists (pun intended!) in the methods to produce the same old thrust. Don’t be scared of change, Gramps. It won’t hurtcha. Or you can stay on the porch and yell at clouds. :)
 
Lachlan said:
I must certainly be wrong. I’m stoopid, right?

I would bet that an airliner-sized VTOL (with any power configuration currently in prototype testing) would generate more dB than a Jet-A turbofan. But a GA sized eVTOL is gong to surprise you. That’s one reason to read about them whenever you get the chance. There are new twists (pun intended!) in the methods to produce the same old thrust. Don’t be scared of change, Gramps. It won’t hurtcha. Or you can stay on the porch and yell at clouds. :)
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My "I think you're probably wrong" comment was reserved to the subject I quoted, but feel free to stretch the envelope. ;)
 
Actually, I think I need something a little stronger. These magazines are all about reporting the new. So what's new in GA? Most of our aircraft were flown by our grandfathers, even the newer entrants are long in the tooth. Crikey, even the kit makers are mostly old, both Monnett and VanGrusven are retired or retiring. Yeah, there's avionics and autopilots, but what about airframes? And now all these startups making brand new airframes in a brand new paradigm. And according to you guys the mags are supposed to ignore all of it because it might be vaporware.

I think everyone told Musk the same thing before Tesla.
 
steingar said:
And according to you guys the mags are supposed to ignore all of it because it might be vaporware.
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I mean, that's kind of the crux of the issue. All of it IS vaporware. No "might be" about it. All of the eVTOL companies make incredible claims, with absolutely nothing to back it up.
 
fasteddie said:
I mean, that's kind of the crux of the issue. All of it IS vaporware. No "might be" about it. All of the eVTOL companies make incredible claims, with absolutely nothing to back it up.
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No one has anything to back anything up until there's a prototype. And yeah, I liked how Dynon did the Vashon Ranger, a LOT. But that just isn't how things are normally done. So they hype it up some. I don't think it'll work, but sometime engineers rise to new challenges with emergent technology. That, and I think new airframes and new technologies are always good.
 
Lachlan said:
Could be your company. That little map explains a lot.
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Wow yeah.... that's a lot of people there to possibly offend, my fellow aviation enthusiast. Care to explain what you meant by that comment? I happen to reside in one of the states Salty has graced with his aviating... so..... what's wrong with my company?
 
Deelee said:
Wow yeah.... that's a lot of people there to possibly offend, my fellow aviation enthusiast. Care to explain what you meant by that comment? I happen to reside in one of the states Salty has graced with his aviating... so..... what's wrong with my company?
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No ****. Talk about dropping your dick on the table. Insulting more than half of the US population because of a bigoted view of the people in a certain geographical area. So sophisticated.
 
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