Autonomous Vehicles Taking Flight

You may have heard a lot about major companies producing and testing self-driven cars over the past year or so.  In fact most car major manufacturers are planning to sell autonomous cars of some form by 2020.  We also have companies such as Uber and Google who famously have released plans to do the same by the same deadlines.

It is thought that by 2020, there will be approximately 10 million autonomous vehicles on the road in the world.

Now don't get all super excited just yet.  The first self-driven cars will likely not be completely driver-less.  For security reasons and legal reasons, in the first few years of these going to market, the cars will still require drivers to interact with the car fairly regularly or at the very least supervise the self-driving AI that is doing the driving.   After a while and when statistics show that it is safe or safer to let the AI drive the vehicles, then we'll have fully automated vehicles on our streets and so on.

Now, because the world knows how to make cars pretty well, and the challenge is mostly on the software and the sensors necessary for automated vehicles to navigate their way safely through populated areas and busy streets, many technology startups and established companies have decided to enter this game as well.

German company Continental are looking at selling automated multi-seat taxis in the Frankfurt area in the next couple years with spacious interior space as a prime selling point.

Continental Urban Experience (CUbE) vehicle

Popular Uber competitor Lyft has created a partnership with Disney Parks to eventually have autonated mini vans (called Minnie Vans at Disney) taxiing people from park outskirts to within their parks.

Intel even bought an automated vehicle startup called Mobileye for huge bucks so they could deploy about 100 self-driven cars (level 4 automation, which means the cars will need to be driven by humans on occasion but not all the time.  Level 5 automation is fully driver-less.)

Heck, many companies are thinking about cargo transportation too, like Einride from Sweden, who thought up a concept cube truck that has absolutely no driver.  Fully loaded, it would weigh in at 20 tons and would be able to ride for 200 km on a single charge.  The truck would either travel fully automated or would be remote-controlled by a company employee.

Einride T-Pod cargo transportation vehicle

All of these planned vehicles are, of course, 100% electric.

What I think is even more exciting though, is that many companies, including some familiar ones are prototyping flying taxis as well.  These would be either autonomous or remote-controlled, just like the transportation vehicle from Einride mentioned above.

Why no actual driver in the vehicle?  Well, there aren't enough pilots to go around and we can't really ask anyone to go through an expensive piloting training program just to ferry oneself around.  These would be more than likely just remote-control operators until the time people are fully vested in the idea of fully automated flying vehicles.

I discuss the implications of this a bit further in the video below:

There seems to be two kinds of automated flying vehicles in development.  All are electric:

1. Drones:  basically what you would expect.  They have fans all around them for stability and generally always fly like a helicopter would.  We're talking about 50 km ranges on a charge an speeds of about 100 km/hr.   Daimler's Volocopter and China's Ehang flying taxis are designed for 2 passengers and have both been approved for trial in Dubai by the end of 2017.  Dubai wishes for their city to bet 25% vehicle automated by 2030.



Daimler's Volocopter (2 seater)

2. VTOL Airplanes:  Vertical TakeOff and Landing airplanes.  These have fans or propellers that either change orientation from vertical for takeoff and landing to horizontal for flying aspect, or their have both types of propellers that activate as needed.  These can fly much faster in a distance but are less maneuverable when going in a line versus the drone types.  The vehicles by Lilium and Uber are meant to carry between 2 and 5 passengers up to 300 km on a single charge at speeds around 300 km/hr.

Lilium electric aircraft (2 seater)

Just like the ground versions of automated vehicles, these are designed to be called by apps on our smartphones for convenience.  It is anticipated that at first, some of these vehicles will be purchased by car owners looking forward to have their own.  However, most will agree that in the future, automated vehicles will be rented or subscribed to by passengers, avoiding the whole situation of parking.  In some cities parking spaces take up more than 20% of the land area.  Imagine what we could do with all that space in cities if cars don't need to be parked all the time!

Expect to see automated flying vehicles in a city near you by 2025, definitively.