Japan's Flying Car – Problems and Solutions

hi welcome to this week's episode of cold fusion last week we looked at neural link but this week we're going to look at something completely different in the 1880s the automobile was the latest achievement in transport and two decades later the wright brothers took humanity to the skies with the first successful aircraft for over a century the question has been asked could we successfully merge the two technologies the first serious attempt was made in 1917 by the aviator glenn curtis his autoplane was powered by a rear-mounted four-blade propeller it did leave the ground but it couldn't achieve full flight the next notable design was the aerocar by the inventor malt taylor it successfully flew in 1949 but only six were ever built over the decades many have tried to crack the code of the flying car but no one has succeeded yet recently a team out of japan showed their latest efforts to achieve this dream but will they succeed in this video we'll take a look at this but then we'll ask deeper questions and branch out into the wider electric aircraft market we're going to uncover some problems and solutions let's get into it you are watching cold fusion tv last month japan showcased a flying car built by the company skydrive who was sponsored by toyota the vehicle is powered by eight independent electric motors and has been in development since 2014 though it was only publicly demonstrated for the first time last month i know what some of you are thinking that's not a flying car that's just a passenger drone well this is just the test phase the next step will be to add wheels a spokesperson for skydrive explains quote before developing a prototype with wheels we would like to ensure that the incredibly difficult flight function has been achieved as a first step we aim at driving function from late 2020 in other words concentrate on the hard part first getting the thing to fly then stick the wheels on it later a trivial task in comparison they continue quote we believe that we can add more value in places like japan and asia where the land is small and it is difficult to land and take off from they aim to go for commercial manned flights in 2023 the final product will cost around thousand us dollars they hope to decrease the cost by 2030 skydrive's unique selling point is that this product is one of the most compact and light flying car designs out there there are several companies developing similar technology including airbus as well as toyota porsche is teaming up with boeing and in january hyundai and uber announced that they were collaborating on an all-electric air taxi for me personally after i took a flight in one of the first all-electric aircraft the alpha electro i could see that maybe small electric aircraft could be a thing in one form or another morgan stanley analysts state that they expect urban air taxis to be common by 2040 with a global market expected to be about 1.5 trillion dollars so why are electric aircraft becoming a thing in short less emissions cheaper running costs and simpler maintenance let's take a closer look at these points electric aviation has the promise of greatly reducing financial and environmental costs of existing air transport according to the australian airport association the biggest airline costs are fuel and maintenance fuel makes up about 27 and maintenance 11 the running costs are powering electric aircraft is low and they are intrinsically less complex than their fuel counterparts too fewer moving parts and a simpler design mean less need for maintenance [Music] electric aircraft could also improve the efficiency of local airports and allow airports in more diverse locations today a lot of airports often have to comply with pollution regulations this causes a curfew for when aircraft can take off and land the result is possible congestion throughout the rest of the operational period with electric aircraft airports are freed from these restrictions improving efficiency reducing costs and with the added benefit of being allowed to be placed nearer to city centres this even opens up opportunities for new kinds of work arrangement though this has become less relevant recently with more people working from home these days in the broader picture it's not all roses for the emerging industry let's take a look at some problems firstly batteries the key issue affecting the uptake of electric aircraft is the need to ensure enough battery energy density to support commercial flights as mentioned previously many times in this channel the ball is rolling graphene solid state and aluminium air are recent developments that are looking likely in the next few years by 2022 nine seat planes could be doing short-haul flights about 500 to a thousand kilometers for example the israeli firm aviation has built a nine-passenger aircraft that is rated to fly up to a thousand kilometers at an altitude of 3000 meters and a speed of 440 kilometers an hour it's expected to enter service in 2022 the key here was to use aluminium air batteries instead of the less practical lithium ion batteries aluminium air batteries have a specific energy of about 1 300 watt hours per kilogram versus lithium ion at about 260 watt hours per kilogram looking at this medium-sized fixed-wing aircraft may be where most of the action is to begin with smaller electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft or e-vetol may be ruled as less efficient when this industry starts taking off as ella atkins a professor of aerospace engineering at the university of michigan states evitol aircraft quote are going to be more energy efficient than helicopters that use a lot of fuel but they will be less efficient than cars because they have to lift themselves from a cost perspective they wouldn't be practical to go to the grocery store so even when the battery issue is solved there's still one thing holding back the future of this industry and it's something that no one's really talking about and it doesn't really seem that many people are thinking about this either that is the conundrum of the charging standards imagine for a second if every car maker's fuel pump was different how inconvenient and inefficient would the automotive industry be that's essentially what's happening for electric cars no one really planned for the charging aspect of the industry the charges provided by different manufacturers don't agree with each other and even the same manufacturer can have different charges for different regions it's a mess and here's exactly what i mean the chademo charging standard from japan is the oldest it was originally developed by nissan for their leaf car but it's now redundant in favor of newer standards [Music] tesla in the united states uses a different standard it's simple and compact but proprietary and has limited voltage capacity tesla has another charger for europe and australia but they also have yet another charger for china and india a separate chinese standard called gb t is the newest dc fast charging standard despite being only a few years old it has surpassed the uptake of all other charging standards by a factor of 10 and looks like the way forward so what is the solution to avoid this mess for the future electric aircraft industry aviation can benefit from all of these lessons learnt in the electric car market and the mess of charging standards it can also capitalize on the progress made with the promising chinese standard i had a chat to a team who was working on just this at the start of 2018 electro aero was the first to obtain approval from an aviation regulator to commercially operate an electric light sport aircraft for recreational flight training since then they identified the need for standardized aviation charging to help accelerate the uptake of electric aircraft electro aero was the company that i worked with when testing the alpha electro aircraft in a previous video the failed attempt at a challenge associated with a cross-country trip was largely due to the proprietary charger and a generator cto and co-founder of electro aero josh portlog helped establish and run an international committee for developing electric aircraft charging standards in mid-2018 josh and his team at electro aero are close to finalizing a universal charging standard for aircraft that will be known as as6968 the electric aviation industry has shown their support in the form of many electric aircraft companies around the world the company recently made a test flight of australia's first microlight aircraft that employs this new as6968 charging standard the company also has a 30 kilowatt rapid charger to top up batteries in less than an hour and they're already on sale if you're interested in seeing the first test flight along with some other info on their rapid charger and the new standard being developed i'll leave a link in the description below the physical protocol of the charger is based on the chinese standard this saves the aviation industry a lot of money because they don't have to reinvent the wheel the software protocol also has ties to the existing standard though there are additional features and considerations specifically designed for the aviation industry for example the new electro aero charging standard can handle redundant batteries on board an aircraft this is common in aviation but rare in electric cars in the future the team also plans to use automated cloud-based billing complete with aircraft identification this is so each charger automatically knows exactly what plane is being charged and how much the subsequent energy cost will be no apps no account logins or any other hassles that current electric vehicle sector has to deal with while the charging standard is designed to cater up to 250 kilowatts or about a one to four seater plane there is eventually going to be a need for megawatt power levels but that's for the future right now it is good that this problem is being looked at and once standardized charging is developed and adopted it will bring us one step closer to an airborne electric air taxi feature why did it fail in the past the reasons are power plant was too heavy power plant was too noisy electric motors were not uh prolific and low weight at this this time in development carbon fiber structures didn't exist these vehicles were trying to be all things they were trying to be a good car and a good aircraft and unfortunately they compromised on both of those design challenges so why will it succeed in the future well things have changed yep we now have high power density batteries we have low mass electric motors we have low noise fans we have lightweight carbon composite structures and now across the world 120 of these concert vehicles exist and they're increasing at a rate of about one a week at present so that's about it from me though i'm curious to know your thoughts on the electric aircraft industry do you think that we're a mere five years away from seeing flying cars become a reality or do you think that this is all going to take much longer let me know your thoughts in the comments section below in next week's episode we'll be taking a look at some cool uses for artificial intelligence and i'll be having an interview with a developer who's doing some cool stuff anyways my name is digo and you've been watching cold fusion and if you do want to see more stuff on science technology business or history definitely subscribe to cold fusion there's a lot of stuff that you'll find interesting okay so i'll see you again next week for the next episode cheers guys it's me thinking you

Channel: ColdFusion

Views: 334,042

Rating: 4.9090672 out of 5

Keywords: Coldfusion, TV, Dagogo, Altraide, Technology, Apple, Google, Samsung, Facebook, Tesla

Id: LdeqzDh78wU

Length: 12min 56sec (776 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 14 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Ignate]

We really don't need flying cars. At least, we don't need them for humans. EV drones delivering freight would be nice, especially if the company running those drones is able to do so while being carbon neutral.

But the whole concept of us flying cars around ignores the shifts we're currently going through. Jobs are changing. The outlook has us commuting less and less.

Would be better to have ultra-fast Hyperloop style transport plus EV autonomous cars for local trips. Flying just adds a lot of complexity we do not need.