[Hitstirrer]

Toyota can't be arsed making a BEV but invest $500k in building a battery electric air taxi.

Joby Aviation and Toyota team up to make eVTOL air taxis a reality

Joby Aviation has been beavering away hammering out the designs and flight dynamics of its awesome-looking tilt-rotor eVTOL for more than 10 years. Now, Joby's got over half a billion dollars in the bank thanks to an investment round led by Toyota.

newatlas.com

 

[AnotherJoe]

Given the power requirements far in excess of a car, then according to Toyota's rationale, this should be fuel cell shouldnt it ?
Because if this can fly on battery alone you sure as hell can drive a car on one without need of a fuel cell.
Corporate schizophrenia or is it just hypocrisy.

 

[BornAgainEcoWarrior]

So it’s a battery powered plane.
Hydrogen for cars batteries for planes? Wrong way round for sure.
Maybe the tie in will help Joby move to H2 power. That might actually make some sense, now we just need the reciprocal learning to make a battery powered car.

 

[JeffG]

Hydrogen for cars batteries for planes? Wrong way round for sure.

They already tried hydrogen for air transport and look where that ended up...

 

[BornAgainEcoWarrior]

They already tried hydrogen for air transport and look where that ended up...

Well it’s an energy density argument in favour of hydrogen, but I take your point.
My point was that if Toyota are going to maintain the position that batteries can’t carry enough energy per kg to build a car with an acceptable range which is why they say hydrogen makes sense for cars... it’s very difficult to accept that the low energy density of batteries is a better solution for planes. Because let’s be honest weight is definitely going to matter in a plane.

 

[cah197]

Because let’s be honest weight is definitely going to matter in a plane.

And yet look at all the money going into electric aircraft projects right now.

 

[Paul_Moxhay]

It makes sense to develop electric or hybrid power units for aircraft. Flying is one of the most polluting things you can do as an individual so making that cleaner if possible makes a lot of sense to me

 

[dk6780]

We also don't need air taxis. They are for the rich only, and post the current situation we need a more egalitarian form of energy usage and a reduction in physical travel. Yes, a non-polluting air taxi is better than a polluting one, but in general they (and most drones) are a technology too far.

 

[BornAgainEcoWarrior]

All good points. It’d be great to see any developments that reduce the impact of flights - batteries or hydrogen or otherwise.

As @dk6780 says not sure we really need air taxis. Looks like fun but I’m not sure why it’s a good idea apart from that.

 

[cah197]

As @dk6780 says not sure we really need air taxis. Looks like fun but I’m not sure why it’s a good idea apart from that.

The pitch probably goes something like:

Q: How much do you normally pay for a black cab from the centre of London to Heathrow?
A: About £80.
Q: How long does it take?
A: Any where from 50 minutes to well over an hour.
Q: How would you like to do the same journey in 10 minutes, guaranteed for £200?
A: Deal!

 

[donald]

They already tried hydrogen for air transport and look where that ended up...

Transatlantic ultra-safe non-stop flights in 1920's, 3 decades before the same thing with fixed wing flight?

Do you mean like that?

 

[cah197]

Transatlantic ultra-safe non-stop flights in 1920's, 3 decades before the same thing with fixed wing flight?

Do you mean like that?

Do you mean ultra safe so long as you’re not in one when it crashes?

List of airship accidents - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

I believe almost all of the Royal Navy airships of the era crashed before being taken out of service.

A colleague of mine was part of a QinetiQ study into the use of modern airships in the 90’s The conclusion was that they are too susceptible to adverse weather and need to always be stored in a large hangar.

For example if it snows they tip over. They also can’t handle any sort of storm. Bit of a drawback.

 

[donald]

Do you mean ultra safe so long as you’re not in one when it crashes?

List of airship accidents - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Not one crash of the many South American passenger route scheduled flights by Delag.

The ones you've listed are almost all experimental/military flights.

Are you going to include all military and experimental flight crashes of fixed wing aircraft in statistics of passenger airline flight accidents too?

 

[BornAgainEcoWarrior]

The pitch probably goes something like:

Q: How much do you normally pay for a black cab from the centre of London to Heathrow?
A: About £80.
Q: How long does it take?
A: Any where from 50 minutes to well over an hour.
Q: How would you like to do the same journey in 10 minutes, guaranteed for £200?
A: Deal!

I use the Heathrow express ...15 minutes (more or less guaranteed) and only a fiver.

This is solving the wrong problem. If public transport works properly you don’t need to spend £200 on a short journey to get there faster.
And if we reduce the number of people jumping on planes to meet colleagues face to face by using remote tools instead we need to go to Heathrow far less in the first place.

 

[cah197]

Not one crash of the many South American passenger route scheduled flights by Delag.

The ones you've listed are almost all experimental/military flights.

Are you going to include all military and experimental flight crashes of fixed wing aircraft in statistics of passenger airline flight accidents too?

Ah, moving the goal posts again.

A quick review of the DELAG fleet (there where only three post WW1) shows that they were rather accident prone.

 

[cah197]

I use the Heathrow express ...15 minutes (more or less guaranteed) and only a fiver.

Clearly you don’t, as it’s not £5. More like £25 for a single.

It’s only 15 minutes on rare occasions if you don’t have to wait for a train, it’s on time and you work at Paddington.

 

[BornAgainEcoWarrior]

Not one crash of the many South American passenger route scheduled flights by Delag.

The ones you've listed are almost all experimental/military flights.

Are you going to include all military and experimental flight crashes of fixed wing aircraft in statistics of passenger airline flight accidents too?

I think you’re both being economical with the reasoning.
Airships did crash passengers did die. They often crashed in ways that people survived. About half the passengers and crew of the Hindenburg survived.
Early winged air travel was hazardous but got safer with the right regulatory frameworks. You might reasonably compare airships with 1930s passenger planes.
But talking about airship crashes from nearly 100 years ago and comparing with modern aircraft which have had 100 years of development doesn’t inform much on modern hydrogen technologies.
Maybe instead we should look at hydrogen cars and refuelling station accidents as a better steer on the state of the technology.

 

[BornAgainEcoWarrior]

I stand corrected £5.50

 

[Big277wave]

Frankly I don't see air taxi's ever being allowed to fly over densely populated cities like London and flying into Heathrow's air space. Even if you could take off from a helipad on the top of a London building the landing point at Heathrow would have to be a long way from the flight path of existing aircraft and probably not even on the Heathrow site. Given that you can't fly drones any where near an airport why would you allow air taxi's.

Crossrail is due to open at the end of the year and will add to the rapid public transport routes to Heathrow (although the date has been pushed back a few times).

 

[BornAgainEcoWarrior]

And you’re right @cah197 i rarely fly these days. I have reduced my business travelling from >50 flights a year to just 4. I no longer fly unless there’s no other reasonable choice.