Robotaxi is an aircraft IMO

[Dids]

There are several clues that point toward robotaxi being an aircraft.
1. Elon said... several years ago that Tesla would love to do an aircraft. But that battery energy density didn't meet requirements. His metric at the time was 400 wh/kg. Tesla 4860 analyzed by the limiting factor was in the range of 300 wh/kg.
2. Franz says he is working on a revolutionary product, can't talk about it, implies ints not in a normal space for passenger vehicles, says currently passenger vehicles have 4 wheels. Implies future ones do not.
3. Semi delivery slide shows robotaxi with x outboard protrusions.

 

[Crissa]

Elon also said there was a necessary floor to energy density they hadn't hit yet for flight. Also, flying requires lots of regulatory interface. The noise issue will always be a problem, too. It's highly unlikely.

-Crissa

 

[Dids]

Elon also said there was a necessary floor to energy density they hadn't hit yet for flight. Also, flying requires lots of regulatory interface. The noise issue will always be a problem, too. It's highly unlikely.

-Crissa

Is that you AJ? ?

 

[anionic1]

I am very curious to see the next major innovation in transportation. If AI and actual real fully automated driving catches on and is implemented at a very large scale it would revolutionize and potentially get rid of traffic which would mean flying cars may not be needed. But if energy densities and regulation moves quickly enough to allow more low altitude flying transportation, i can easily see cars for daily transportation being wiped out within 50 years.

For sure the next few decades will be a battle for innovation. just think about the motivation the governing agencies have to get rid of road traffic. Huge amounts of public funds goes into roads and infrastructure. I think its 5th on the list of local spending. It would seem like it would relieve some public spending. Nothing to maintain in the air.

Really though for Tesla it would cannibalize the work they have done for so long. If an innovation came along that had the energy density to make flying vehicles useful for daily transport and safe and legal, you wouldn't buy a car with wheels. Maybe you would for heavier loads. If I opened up Teslas website right now and the Model F was available as a flying car for $200k and it was legal. I would buy it and move to some cool cabin or ranch and fly my butt to the city to work every day in a heartbeat.

There are some really innovative parking technologies out there that will pair perfectly with this type of flying car. I am working with one right now that uses automated skateboard type robot lifts and picks up the car at the valet and takes it into a high density parking structure and stacks the cars closely so you can increase the vehicles you get in a structure by about 50%. That kind of tech allows flying cars to immediately integrate with existing parking since you can land and the automated robots just picks up your vehicle and parks it for you. No need to be able to roll on the ground.

 

[Crissa]

Is that you AJ? ?

What? o-o;

-Crissa

 

[JBee]

There are some really innovative parking technologies out there that will pair perfectly with this type of flying car. I am working with one right now that uses automated skateboard type robot lifts and picks up the car at the valet and takes it into a high density parking structure and stacks the cars closely so you can increase the vehicles you get in a structure by about 50%. That kind of tech allows flying cars to immediately integrate with existing parking since you can land and the automated robots just picks up your vehicle and parks it for you. No need to be able to roll on the ground.

But a robotaxi would never park or probably even be owned privately. So it would just land, charge and fly off with the next customer. The worst ROI is from parked assets.

 

[charliemagpie]

I guess, early stages For VTOL could be for emergency services, areas around the world with bad or no road networks... Snow countries. etc etc

Imagine an Ambulance with a roof mounted return to base VTOL patient capsule.
Just those applications and many we haven't thought of, not necessarily as a car alternative, is a huge market.

 

[Newton]

nah, Elon said many times hes not interested in vtols.
but no steering wheel car is gonna be wierd

 

[anionic1]

But a robotaxi would never park or probably even be owned privately. So it would just land, charge and fly off with the next customer. The worst ROI is from parked assets.

I don't ever want to be reliant on someone else for transportation. I get that its the whole point of Elon's Robotaxi, but I am looking at it as a personal vehicle as I am sure many others will. The only ROI I would look for in my main means of transportation is the benefit of having it get me where I want, when I want. In my opinion the accumulated time lost waiting for someone else's transportation in my life isn't worth it.

 

[Lekrow]

I doubt Elon wants to have to start fighting the FAA just to deliver a product lol.

 

[JBee]

There are several clues that point toward robotaxi being an aircraft.
1. Elon said... several years ago that Tesla would love to do an aircraft. But that battery energy density didn't meet requirements. His metric at the time was 400 wh/kg. Tesla 4860 analyzed by the limiting factor was in the range of 300 wh/kg.
2. Franz says he is working on a revolutionary product, can't talk about it, implies ints not in a normal space for passenger vehicles, says currently passenger vehicles have 4 wheels. Implies future ones do not.
3. Semi delivery slide shows robotaxi with x outboard protrusions.

As anionic1 pointed out Tesla have invested to much into wheeled cars and FSD to cannibalise that right now.

Full Autopilot flying has been around for decades and is a solved problem that Tesla doesn't even have work on, and there's not many improvements I can think of to make. For example all my quadplane eVTOL UAVs run on Ardupilot that can do nearly anything you need to to fly right now fully autonomously, and we've been in a few UAV competitions to do just that, to prove full autonomy in SAR operations.

Flying autopilot is more complicated from a vehicle control standpoint, bit from a space occupancy perspective it's super simple in comparison to a car that has to navigate roads, markings and other traffic etc. In the air there's tons of "road space" where each aircraft can nearly afford to have its on "road" flightpath between cities.

EM also mentioned it would be supersonic. That essentially means its long range, at least 500miles. That means it needs to fly at high altitude (electric doesn't need to be breath air to burn fuel), which in turn means it's a pressurised cabin to keep the passengers alive. Supersonic also means cruising at 40,000ft or more to get better mileage efficieny. The higher the thinner the air, the further you go at higher speeds, and also the less you need to care about the noise from the sonic boom.

But to get too FL400 you need to climb at some 4000ft/min (which is faster than a 787) and do that for 10minutes or so, meaning you cover about 80miles just in the climb out phase of flight, before you would even try to get to supersonic flight. Even without going supersonic cruise, just getting down from there again by gliding using no power at all would be another 150miles of range at a 20:1 glide ratio (like the 787). So just a single hop like that would be 230miles (370km) of range just to get to an altitude where one could even fly supersonic at some sort of efficiency.

If anything the Tesla plane would go much higher because it is not limited by air density for internal combustion like a jet. So at possibly +80,000 feet, with minimum range hops in the 500mile range, but along with an hour or two of supersonic cruise range, you would be looking at between 1200 to 2000mile (3200km) range. Not really robotaxi range territory, more for beating airliners accross the country (USA, Canada, Australia etc). In Europe, you'd become an international flight before you reach supersonic cruise altitude...

But I'm not quite sure how EM expects to get to supersonic cruise with 400Wh/kg at all. Rough numbers without friction losses you need around 65kWh just to lift 1000kg to 24km altitude, so at 400Wh/kg you get a pack mass of 165kg just to get to altitude to fight gravity alone. (But also 500mile range in the " ballistic hop" as described above)

So does that mean we are talking low altitude supersonic cruise to get the 400Wh/kg to work? If so how does he imagine to overcome the sonic boom and literally rattling houses, let alone the inefficiencies of low altitude flight and range? There are some new ways of modulating supersonic wake propagation but, they mostly reduce the sonic boom but don't improve efficiency as much as high altitude flight.

If you want a flying robotaxi, then I think making it super sonic is not necessary, possible or affordable atm. ?

 

[Dids]

As anionic1 pointed out Tesla have invested to much into wheeled cars and FSD to cannibalise that right now.

Full Autopilot flying has been around for decades and is a solved problem that Tesla doesn't even have work on, and there's not many improvements I can think of to make. For example all my quadplane eVTOL UAVs run on Ardupilot that can do nearly anything you need to to fly right now fully autonomously, and we've been in a few UAV competitions to do just that, to prove full autonomy in SAR operations.

Flying autopilot is more complicated from a vehicle control standpoint, bit from a space occupancy perspective it's super simple in comparison to a car that has to navigate roads, markings and other traffic etc. In the air there's tons of "road space" where each aircraft can nearly afford to have its on "road" flightpath between cities.

EM also mentioned it would be supersonic. That essentially means its long range, at least 500miles. That means it needs to fly at high altitude (electric doesn't need to be breath air to burn fuel), which in turn means it's a pressurised cabin to keep the passengers alive. Supersonic also means cruising at 40,000ft or more to get better mileage efficieny. The higher the thinner the air, the further you go at higher speeds, and also the less you need to care about the noise from the sonic boom.

But to get too FL400 you need to climb at some 4000ft/min (which is faster than a 787) and do that for 10minutes or so, meaning you cover about 80miles just in the climb out phase of flight, before you would even try to get to supersonic flight. Even without going supersonic cruise, just getting down from there again by gliding using no power at all would be another 150miles of range at a 20:1 glide ratio (like the 787). So just a single hop like that would be 230miles (370km) of range just to get to an altitude where one could even fly supersonic at some sort of efficiency.

If anything the Tesla plane would go much higher because it is not limited by air density for internal combustion like a jet. So at possibly +80,000 feet, with minimum range hops in the 500mile range, but along with an hour or two of supersonic cruise range, you would be looking at between 1200 to 2000mile (3200km) range. Not really robotaxi range territory, more for beating airliners accross the country (USA, Canada, Australia etc). In Europe, you'd become an international flight before you reach supersonic cruise altitude...

But I'm not quite sure how EM expects to get to supersonic cruise with 400Wh/kg at all. Rough numbers without friction losses you need around 65kWh just to lift 1000kg to 24km altitude, so at 400Wh/kg you get a pack mass of 165kg just to get to altitude to fight gravity alone. (But also 500mile range in the " ballistic hop" as described above)

So does that mean we are talking low altitude supersonic cruise to get the 400Wh/kg to work? If so how does he imagine to overcome the sonic boom and literally rattling houses, let alone the inefficiencies of low altitude flight and range? There are some new ways of modulating supersonic wake propagation but, they mostly reduce the sonic boom but don't improve efficiency as much as high altitude flight.

If you want a flying robotaxi, then I think making it super sonic is not necessary, possible or affordable atm. ?

Tesla mission is transition the world to sustainable. The factory is the product. Elon spent 45 billion on twitter. Do u think he cares if his robotaxi means no one will buy cars?
Fsd isn't just for cars, it's also for optimus. I don't think argument that a roboaircraft would cannibalize other business is valid for Tesla.
The main question is battery energy density.... but some signs pointing to Tesla battery breakthrough... Munro says new 4680 is different than previous 4680. They say it has almost no liquid inside.

 

[Dids]

nah, Elon said many times hes not interested in vtols.
but no steering wheel car is gonna be wierd

I remember Elon talking about wanting to do a supersonic evtol.
https://verticalmag.com/features/elon-musk-supersonic-electric-vtol-jet/

 

[JBee]

So the main problem with non-VTOL aircraft is that they need a airstrip to takeoff. Most people don't have easy or affordable access to airport landing strip's, let alone one attached to their house for commuting etc.

VTOL solves that by giving you a "airstip in the sky" in that you take off using upward thrust motors to 30-40m above the ground and it holds your altitude until the wings reach speeds over stall, that then takeover the lift and allows it to fly on its much more efficient wings instead. It gets better in that you can design smaller wings, dedicated for cruise flight without worrying about having a slow stall speed for landing.

Most EVTOLs don't use that hack yet though, but we did with our competition quadplanes, meaning we could triple payload and battery capacity and double range with the same aircraft. A 2.5kg evtol platform capable of 120kmh and 100km range from just a 100Wh pack, running a full Autopilot stack and onboard image recognition using long range wifi and 4G comms using Zeroteir to punch a hole through the mobile network NAT, giving our comp. members access to the flight internationally in real time.

VTOL provides other benefits other than just takeoff and landing options. You can push this to the max, in that efficient aspect ratio high cruise speed wings can be used that only produce enough lift at cruise reducing induced drag to the minimum possible. The wings work out to be so slender you will have trouble putting a 4680 cell in them.

For example: Have a look at a Tomohawk cruise missile flight profile and efficientcy for range. Launches from the spot using a rocket booster, unfolds its tiny little cruise optimised wings and flies sub-sonic cruise just seconds after launch. It doesn't care about landing...as it's meant to explode on impact. ?

I can agree that FSD is also for optimus, but also freight and ground/underground based wheeled transport. My point was more that I don't think robotaxi is teslas aircraft solution given the supersonic component etc. Battery energy density will determine range, but much can be achieved with the right flight profile and altitude.

 

[neilevan]

I am very curious to see the next major innovation in transportation. If AI and actual real fully automated driving catches on and is implemented at a very large scale it would revolutionize and potentially get rid of traffic which would mean flying cars may not be needed. But if energy densities and regulation moves quickly enough to allow more low altitude flying transportation, i can easily see cars for daily transportation being wiped out within 50 years.

For sure the next few decades will be a battle for innovation. just think about the motivation the governing agencies have to get rid of road traffic. Huge amounts of public funds goes into roads and infrastructure. I think its 5th on the list of local spending. It would seem like it would relieve some public spending. Nothing to maintain in the air.

Really though for Tesla it would cannibalize the work they have done for so long. If an innovation came along that had the energy density to make flying vehicles useful for daily transport and safe and legal, you wouldn't buy a car with wheels. Maybe you would for heavier loads. If I opened up Teslas website right now and the Model F was available as a flying car for $200k and it was legal. I would buy it and move to some cool cabin or ranch and fly my butt to the city to work every day in a heartbeat.

There are some really innovative parking technologies out there that will pair perfectly with this type of flying car. I am working with one right now that uses automated skateboard type robot lifts and picks up the car at the valet and takes it into a high density parking structure and stacks the cars closely so you can increase the vehicles you get in a structure by about 50%. That kind of tech allows flying cars to immediately integrate with existing parking since you can land and the automated robots just picks up your vehicle and parks it for you. No need to be able to roll on the ground.

Check out Archer Aviation. They have an air taxi and a joint effort with United Airlines.