I was just out watering palm trees when it hit me:
None of the AWE or EVTOL efforts are leading anywhere.
I had just stumbled across yet another “flying car” project:
The Samson Switchblade Flying Sportscar Samson Sky | Switchblade Flying Sports Car
They’ve raised millions of dollars!
They’ve pre-sold I think it’s over 1000 units…
From what I can discern, their prototypes have never left the ground - still taxiing around runways, trying to get up the guts to take off.
The wings look too low - it will be hard to land, due to ground effect.
Thei “big news” is a 7-blade prop replacing their old 5-blade prop.
Then you see the prop placement and it seems improbable (impropable?).
They say the wings deploy in 3 miinutes at the push of a button, but I can’t find a video of that.
Why no video fo the wings folding out when that is the main feature???
Their still mucking around, all progress in the future.
I did not see even an RC scale model, just an ungainly-looking full-size taxiing prototype.
I’m still looking at JOBY (former AWE player) - bleeding millions, employing over 1000 people, military contracts, still nothing in operation after 15 years. And still harping on a single limited application - getting people to the airport - geez! As though they just can’t get airports and jetliners out of their heads!
Checking out Lillium - similar lack of progress.
I don’t even need to mention AWE efforts.
And all the kite-ships and magnus sails? Tired of hearing about it. Zzzzzz…
As a dedicated huge tech fan and practitioner, I never thought I would find myself this far into skeptic-land.
I have to say, I’ll be surprised if ANY of these airborne efforts, whether for kite energy, propelling ships, magnus sails, or flying in your car, is ever successful.
Flying cars have been tried for what, maybe 100 years? It always turns out that a good car makes a poor airplane, and vice-versa.
Enlarged multi-rotor drones for carrying people? Why not? Well, except if you have any glitch within a few hundred feet of the ground you might crash. But the real telltale clue for me is the lack of anything in operation - just like AWE.
Let’s look at something similar: STOL airplanes. That’s an airplane designed to take off and land within a few feet, using slats and flaps to increase lift from the wings. Imagine if we were watching decades of people talking about STOL, but none ever worked out or went into service, no matter how many years rolled on… You’d think STOL was a losing concept.
But no, it is a WINNING concept, with STOL competitions taking place for decades already - modified Piper Cubs and Cessnas, routinely taking off and landing in just a few feet of runway, demonstrating the ability to take off and land in remote places, and they are used for this. Example: Alaska bush pilots fly STOL planes. It’s a concept that works, so people use it.
All these other supposed “breakthroughs” are in question, and I would unfortunately have to predict, doomed to failure. No matter how many millions they raise, their “progress” is always 2 years out. It’s never “now”. There’s never a profitable product, or a useful product, never anything in production, never anything in regular operation, just more empty promises and the ability to attract more dollars.
While we’ve always had someone working on a “flying car”. these days the number of such projects seems to have greatly multiplied. Too much cheap money floating around out there, and with the internet and renderings, it seems easy to paint a promising picture, until you demand to see one flying, or how the wings fold out, etc., at which point we’re treated to excuses and statements of progress in a couple more years. Yeah, sure, I’ll believe any of it when I see it fully developed. Meanwhile, my unexpected an unwanted skepticism increases every day. 