It seems appropriate given that last week’s blog challenged the potential mass roll-out of robotaxis to tackle this week another of the visionary concepts that I would argue attracts more attention than it deserves – that of the flying car. This is not a new idea – the first functioning flying cars date from the first half of the 20th century with demonstrated ability to both fly and drive on the road, but none were commercially viable, and in many cases, the car and the aeroplane structure were separate, rather than in a single integrated structure where the machine could convert from road vehicle to aerial mode and back again at any point. They were also fixed wing aircraft that still needed a long straight road to function as a runway for take-off and landing.
More recent projects including that launched by XPeng at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in January are instead rotary wing aircraft i.e. helicopters using electric power rather than combustion engines. They are not the only car manufacturer who has shown interest. In 2018, Audi teamed up with Airbus and Italdesign to propose a flying robotaxi – though like those designs from 80 years ago, there was a passenger capsule which could connect to separate road and aerial power modules according to need. Presumably you would have a number of the road modules at hub locations that you flew between before continuing your journey by road, a bit like a battery-swapping model.
Whilst high density batteries, powerful motors and lightweight materials may make it easier to produce a compact transformable vehicle, the barriers to success are not technical, but practical. I declare a personal interest insofar as I am a helicopter pilot so fully understand the rigour that is applied to all forms of general aviation, and this even extends in most countries to the operation of drones. Many of the regulations – whether on pilots or aircraft – are focused on ensuring that the public on the ground are protected from harm, rather than on the pilot or passengers in the aircraft. The regulatory regime is often criticised for being bureaucratic and expensive, but it does generally work in terms of keeping accident rates, injuries and deaths low – not withstanding a couple of recent high profile incidents.
It’s impossible to imagine this type of regulatory environment being applied to thousands of flying cars – whether privately owned or as part of a fleet of robotaxis. That part of the regulation that applies to pilots covering their basic ability, adherence to air law and health presumably becomes unnecessary in the eyes of the companies developing the flying cars as their products will be fully autonomous – get in, set your destination and it will lift off and navigate safely to complete your journey back on land. Given that we are still struggling to get totally reliable autonomous cars, what are the chances to achieve the same thing in three dimensions? At least if an autonomous car gets confused it just stops, maybe pulls over to the side of the road, puts the hazard lights on and waits further instructions (or a reboot).
If autonomous flying cars become viable, then it is reasonable to assume that we will see the drone deliveries touted by Amazon and others also becoming a reality, as well as the more laudable emergency transport of medical supplies and similar applications. This creates another level of complexity as we end up with hundreds or thousands of much smaller unmanned aerial machines sharing the air with the flying taxis and the types of aircraft that we see today, including general aviation users at relatively low altitudes (typically under 1,000 metres) and police, air ambulance and pipeline inspection patrols, often at altitudes under 300 metres. This is beyond the scope of traditional air traffic control systems to manage due to the impossibility of understanding the potential conflicts between the different flightpaths including monitoring any intentional or inadvertent deviations from that plan in real time, with as close to 100% accuracy as possible.
Whilst not doubting the potential of AI to cover some of this monitoring and decision-making, I still do not believe that directions from the ground, whether derived from humans or an AI bot, could manage this complexity. In my view, the only feasible approach would be self-management by each device based on direct peer-to-peer communications with anything in the vicinity. Working to a common and regulated set of rules, priorities would be set that would clear a path for an air ambulance and would prioritise a medical drone over an Amazon one. Small machines (not easily seen) would give way to larger machines, potentially still with human pilots who (I hope) still had the authority to enjoy flying for leisure and were able to make their own navigation.
This is therefore about the internet of things (IoT) and is applicable not only to managing airspace for flying robotaxis, but also for the active management of collision avoidance at ground level with road vehicles, bicycles and possibly even pedestrians (using their mobile phone signal as the beacon). Rather than your car braking to avoid an imminent collision because it has ‘seen’ an obstacle ahead through LIDAR, it might slow much earlier, or choose a different route because the IoT has advised it of a traffic queue or a changing traffic light ahead. This is not a vision that is decades into the future, but something that is enabled by 5G and 6G cellular technology. The same advances that might enable the safe operation of flying cars will actually bring real benefit to cars stuck on the ground much earlier. (And I can continue to enjoy my flying without having to look out for an Uber in my 2 o’clock…)
Steve Young is managing director of ICDP
