Tag: Skycar

Air Taxis in West Chester, Ohio: The future is now, and its very exciting

The future is now

It’s going to happen at this point anyway.  My bringing it up now is more of a formality of connecting the dots and explaining to anybody who will listen how the future economy under President Trump will look.  I have conversations about making Ohio the number one state for business-friendly conditions all the time.  I attend many seminars on economic development and Chamber of Commerce incentives for depressed areas looking to rebound.  And when I say the only thing holding back this technology is the FAA, politics has changed.  Deregulation under Trump will get stuffy bureaucrats out of the way, and a second wave of aviation and aerospace development will be unleashed.  The other day, I talked a lot about Hyperloop and how and why a terminal should be built in Monroe, Ohio. But today, I’m talking about an old idea that is about to be unleashed and create an all-new transportation mode: skycars, or more technically speaking, VTOL air taxis.  I can say from personal experience that Joby Aviation, up the road from West Chester and Liberty Township, is at the front of the market.  They have air taxis ready to go, built, tested, flushed out, and prepared for delivery to market in 2025/2026; essentially, all that is standing in the way is the FAA approval process.  Joby Aviation is making a piloted version, but they will quickly become fully automatic and will work by calling one on your phone and having them pick you up and perform just like an Uber.  The future is here, now.  All that needed to happen was that politics would have to get behind it.  We don’t already have these air taxis in use because the Biden administration was a slow and Marxist micromanager that stalled all these efforts.  If Trump had stayed in the White House in 2020, these Joby air taxis would have been out for a few years by now.  So once we get a Trump administration back in the White House and install a pro-business mindset back into America, Joby and a few other companies are going to move quickly, and technical innovation on this front will happen at a blistering pace. 

Knowing all that, I would propose that we get all the minds together in West Chester and Liberty Township and become the first areas in the world to develop official Sky Ports.  Abu Dhabi and China are already deep in development.  And Europe is already all over it.  But they don’t have Joby Aviation right down the road and a stable environment to perform the early day development of the technology, which could make Ohio the first to fly again.  Here’s how and why it would work.  For instance, there is a nice little piece of property across from Ikea in West Chester that is just big enough for a sky port, a mini runway kind of helipad where these air taxis would land and take off like a helicopter, but much quieter and with much more stable flight.  This always happens to me; people come and see me from out of town.  They stay at the many hotels and have to get back and forth between CVG and West Chester, and their biggest problem is the traffic down I-75, which gets back to the airport to catch their flight when doing business in West Chester.  This air taxi system would take all that worry away and improve life for many people. 

For instance, when business guests were ready to leave their hotel, they would walk or catch a little transport from their hotel to Sky Port by Ikea. Theoretically, a sky taxi would be waiting for them.  In this case, a piloted version of the Joby VTOL vehicle would be waiting for them just like an Uber, dialed up by their phone with the ticket, and everything would be paid.  The guests would arrive and get into the craft like a car.  The sky taxi would fly them down to the airport at CVG and land at the front of the terminal, likely on top of the parking garage there, and fly over all the traffic, making the trip in about 15 minutes, which usually takes over 50 minutes.  Another problem I have is bringing people from West Chester who are in town without a car to sporting events.  I typically pick them up and drive to the Great American Ballpark to attend a game for the evening.  Getting downtown with all the rush hour traffic is a pain in the neck.  It would be much better to get into an air taxi and fly straight to the stadium, land in a nice, safe place along the river, and get to the game in about 10 minutes instead of an hour during those peak hours of 5 to 6 PM.  When the game was over, the passengers would just let the air taxi service know you were about to leave, and they would come and pick you up just like an Uber driver now.  Only it would be a VTOL instead of a car.  The same air taxi service could be set up to get to Kings Island from all over Cincinnati.  It could also be set up to serve politicians from their districts directly to the Ohio Statehouse.  There are a vast number of immediate applications that would benefit immediately from the low price of freshly poured concrete. 

After the FAA permit process, the next barrier would be to win over the public.  So, the sooner people see these vehicles working and overcome their fear of flying, the more the concept will expand rapidly.  At first, it would be similar to a helicopter ride experience that you see in very safe tourist areas.  Only this air taxi concept is even safer and much quieter.  It would be at a small volume, maybe a few flights every hour throughout the peak hours of a business day.  But enough people are interested now to make that happen with the Joby Aviation vehicles right out of the box.  However, the flight frequency would quickly increase to a flight every couple of minutes, and even several flights from several pads at the Skyport would come and go all the time.  It will also greatly enhance the business climate wherever sports reside.  So, I think Ohio has a unique opportunity to be the first.  West Chester, precisely because of its hotels and business traffic, could be the first in the world to demonstrate this technology and benefit economically from the visionary approach.  I’m just connecting the dots here for the many people I know in this business who need to know about each other.  And to explain that this isn’t some far off Jetson’s fantasy concept.  I’ve been involved in these Skycars for over three decades now, so when I say that they are here, I can say it with confidence.  Air taxis are here; they will happen and will be the hottest ticket in town for the next half of a decade.  People will find them very convenient, safe, and pleasant.  And they will become nearly as common as a personal car in a very short time.  The VTOL market needed a president like Trump in the White House.  The rest was waiting for the permit approval, which is about to happen as you read this.  If not sooner. 

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Skycars are Finally Here: The use of sour gas as a next generation fuel supply

I’ve been saying it for many years and now it’s here, Skycars are a reality.  As many know I have been a fan of the great work that Paul Moller has been doing with his M400 Skycar for many years, well before drone technology changed the marketplace.  Paul Moller was there first, and I’ve been writing about him for decades.  People who listened to me and bought stock in some of these skycar companies are going to become very rich.  So the next time I tell you something—be sure to listen.  Fortunately for Paul his technology has evolved into the engine design at Freedom Motors which will eventually be the go to power plant for all these other skycar companies that are essentially taking the drone concept to the mass transit market.   The Freedom Motors engines are small, durable and extremely powerful making them ideal for the emerging skycar market.  As things stand now the first skycars are going to be of the single seat electric variety—which won’t run long per charge.  Eventually as the public gets used to the idea the fuel of choice will be sour gas which is a byproduct of landfills.  This is an extraordinary opportunity and will open up a new market completely by turning garbage literally into a usable, viable technology.

http://www.moller.com/

http://www.freedom-motors.com/

http://mailchi.mp/moller/moller-internationalfreedom-motors-may-2017-newsletter-2737421

As much as I hate to say it, but I’ve told you this too dear reader, China is about to unleash its Autonomous Aerial Vehicle (AAV) over Dubai this month (July 2017).   The craft is called the EHANG184 and is capable of carrying a single human being through the air to the destination of their choice.   It is essentially a large drone that you could otherwise purchase at Best Buy.  The drawback is the large open blades that could easily slice into people as they come and go from the craft, but it’s a start.  It won’t take long for people to begin using these craft to get across the city instead of using a taxi.  Using the air of cities to take the pressure off ground traffic is the solution of the future for transportation, and it’s been like that for a long time.  The key issue that needed to be worked out was GPS navigation and altitude reasoning within 3D space, and the reliability of the power plants to use multi speed function to make subtle adjustments to pitch, and roll to maintain precise directional control.  Now that the drone market has opened people up to the idea of stable flight, they are ready to ride them and Dubai will be the first.

But that’s just the beginning, Italdesign and Airbus have unveiled the Pop.Up, a trailblazing modular ground and air passenger concept vehicle system.  During the 87th Geneva International Motor Show, Italdesign and Airbus world- premiered Pop.Up, the first modular, fully electric, zero emission concept vehicle system designed to relieve traffic congestion in crowded megacities. Pop.Up envisages a modular system for multi-modal transportation that makes full use of both ground and airspace.

Pop.Up System consists of a three layers concept: – an Artificial Intelligence platform that, based on its user knowledge, manages the travel complexity offering alternative usage scenarios and assuring a seamless travel experience; – a vehicle shaped as a passenger capsule designed to be coupled with two different and independent electric propelled modules, the ground module and the air module. Other public means of transportation (e.g. trains or hyperloops) could also integrate the Pop.Up capsule; – an interface module that dialogues with users in a fully virtual environment.

The Pop.Up vehicle combines the flexibility of a small two-seater ground vehicle with the freedom and speed of a vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) air vehicle, thus bridging the automotive and aerospace domains.

At the heart of the concept is a capsule: designed to accommodate passengers. This high-tech, monocoque carbon-fibre cocoon measures 2.6 metres long, 1.4 metres high, and 1.5 metres wide. The capsule transforms itself into a city car by simply coupling to the ground module, which features a carbon-fibre chassis and is battery-powered.

For megacity journeys with high congested traffic, the capsule disconnects from the ground module and is carried by a 5 by 4.4 metre air module propelled by eight counter-rotating rotors. In this configuration, Pop.Up becomes an urban self-piloted air vehicle, taking advantage of the third dimension to get from A to B efficiently whilst avoiding traffic congestion on the ground.

Once passengers reach their destination, the air and ground modules with the capsule autonomously return to dedicated recharge stations to wait for their next customers.

That Airbus design is kind of a level two-phase, the final phase will be personal transportation vehicles that come and go from your driveway and it is there that the M400 style of vehicles will make their mark and it will be the small, but extremely powerful Freedom Motors which power them.  The previous versions will still be in use around the cities, those of the Pop Up and the Italdesign, but the future will be with Freedom Motors and the M400.  There will of course be other manufacturers besides Moller International, but those Freedom Motor engines running off multiple types of fuel are the keys to the skycar market success.  Electric power will always have its sustainable drawbacks for long flights—anything over 30 minutes, but the use of sour gas is a phenomenal new market opportunity that could easily fill our skys with personal transportation allowing us to get around the world far more cheaply and independently.

As space opens up and the commercial business of flying from spaceports to job opportunities in orbit and on the moon increase, ground based flying—relative to the horizon of the earth—will become normal.   Driving in cars and trucks on our roadways will still be relevant, but it will be much less desirable as these skyway options open up.  There just isn’t any reason to be stuck on a highway in traffic wasting all that productive time.  As human beings, we have many more important things that we could be doing.  While the electric cars being done by Tesla are impressive, the technology being developed by them will essentially launch the new generation of skycar technology which will change transportation forever.   Once we go there, we’ll never return to strictly ground based systems.   They are too slow and too inefficient.

But the time is now.  We are in the age of personal air transportation and it’s about time.   In the 90s I pitched the skycar concept to everyone I ran into.  I tried to get delivery companies to use the M400 Skycar to replace FedEx vans and UPS—but the engines were not yet stable enough and the governments of the world were way too slow to accept something so new and fresh.  I even included the M400 in several of my published works such as The Symposium of Justice (2004) and my Curse of Fort Seven Mile series—(2015) just to get people to start thinking of the viability of skycar technology. So finally, it’s here—not the way I’d like it to be—the United States should have been the first to use it but due to our overly aggressive regulatory environment we can hardly fly a paper airplane anymore—so Dubai is doing it first.  We’ll of course follow the world from America even though Paul Moller is a good California inventor who essentially was 40 years ahead of the rest of the world.  What really matters is that it’s finally happening and we will all be a lot better off because of it.

Rich Hoffman

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Skycar Update: China is going to beat us to the future

I received a note the other night that disturbed me greatly from one of the people in this world that I truly admire. I won’t reveal the details of that note since it contains personal information. But the gist of the correspondence is that it appears that China is on the verge of investing over a billion dollars in Skycar technology’s Rotapower engine to begin the process of development of that engine which makes the Skycar possible. To understand what Skycars are, click here to review my article on them.

I have been seeking to pull together all the interested parties to get the United States into the game going as far as contacting President Obama, and General Motors after the bail-out, to help us rediscover ourselves. But there was no response from Obama or General Motors. They aren’t interested in new technology, only the old.

So China is getting ready to usher in this technology for all the reasons that you’ll hear in the below broadcast of Doc Thompson as Doc discusses how the EPA shut down oil drilling in Alaska. We are our own worst enemy in the United States because too many special interests are getting in the way of development of new technology.

I have been speaking to this company Mollar International for well over 15 years, and what prompted my recent discussion with them was the need of an accurate launch period for their technology so I could do what I could to bring everyone together in America. But as was explained to me in the undisclosed letter, most of the investors in Mollar International, and Freedom Motors, are foreign investors, even though the inventor is as American as there is in our modern age. So as he explained, it’s not his first choice, but it is out of necessity. He has to go where the money is, and the desire to produce his product will take him, and right now it’s China.

Below I will disclose the non-confidential portions of my correspondence with Mollar International so the reader can see what is coming in the near future. Unfortunately because the United States is over-regulated and drags it’s feet in too many ways, it will be China that will be first.

First the letter from me to Bruce, then the response from Bruce.

Hi Bruce,

I was wondering how close your company is to a working model that could perform as a shuttle service beginning with a line running from West Chester, Ohio to Columbus.

Once Skycar performed the shuttle service for key people of this region and gained media, and political support, it would become viable for an amusement park such as Kings Island to offer a transport to Cedar Point. Both amusement parks are owned by Cedar Fair Amusements and would benefit by offering pass holders an economic way to visit both parks within the same day with their Platinum season pass offerings. The two parks are about 300 miles apart and they have a platinum package that allows season pass holders to visit those two parks for free. So a Skycar shuttle would be a great asset to their business model, and a great way to introduce the technology to the public at large and establish trust in the vehicles. Those two amusement parks are two of the largest and most spectacular in the country. A successful implementation of this type of shuttle service would then convince the Disney Parks in Florida to offer a similar shuttle service from their parks in central Florida to their cruise line in Port Canaveral.

This is something I have been considering for a while, but I believe all the above is very possible. I suppose the big question would be as to whether or not your Skycar is technically able to perform the task as of now, and if not, is there a time line that is reasonable so that I could begin to pitch this concept to the interested parties.

I’d be interested in knowing more details if you could provide them.

Thanks,

Rich

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Dear Rich,
As you know the Moller M400 Skycar is in development, and the working prototype of the M400X has successfully completed its initial hover tests. Unfortunately we are still having difficulties raising the required capital to move forward with our announced plans, therefore our present business plan calls for production of 1,000 of the M200G Neuera over the next 3+ years (2011 through 2014). We can produce this vehicle at much lower cost because of the very limited regulatory oversight that a vehicle of this type appears to require (it is a “ground effect” aircraft and therefore exempt from the traditional certification process and may not require a pilots license to operate).

The interest shown to date in this vehicle suggests that the early production models could be sold at a premium price. It is proposed that the first 40 units of the M200G be sold by auction. If a buyer indicates an interest in acquiring a M200G he will be put on a list of potential buyers. When that list totals some yet-to-be-specified number, the auction will begin. While this will require our resources to focus on the M200-series products for the next couple of years, it should enable us to raise sufficient funds to regain momentum on the M400 Skycar thereafter.

The next phase of the M400 testing will be to extend the hover flight characteristics with manned and untethered flights. We have prepared the M400X for the new, more powerful Rotapower engines required for this phase, and are working to integrate these engines with updated electronics being made for the M200 that make up the artificial stability system. When we get to the next set of tests with the M400 we will endeavor to safely demonstrate the new features with a set of piloted test flights defined by the FAA for an Experimental Aircraft.

After the completion of these tests, will hope to build up to three M400 pre-production aircraft that will incorporate changes to the fuselage and cabin and prepare us for high-speed, and mid-air VTOL to high-speed cruise transition maneuvers. It is our intent to test the full-scale preproduction Skycar in a wind tunnel to validate the transition characteristics prior to performing this transition in flight, but high-speed flight tests may be performed that originate with the nacelles (engine pods) in the horizontal position rather than their VTOL-mode orientation of 45 degrees of rotation. These tests will require that the Skycar use a conventional runway for take off and landing and will be required only for these tests. The Skycar’s VTOL mode take off and landing capabilities will continue to be demonstrated during other low-speed test flights. The earliest we anticipate an FAA certified production Skycar is now 2013, and due to the many milestones yet to be achieved it is very difficult to set an actual schedule of availability.

Regards,

Bruce Calkins
General Manager
Moller International
www.moller.com

 

Skycar is a very exciting technology. Unfortunately for the United States, Wilber and Orville Wright wouldn’t be able to fly a plane in Kitty Hawk, and Edison probably couldn’t develop a light bulb today, because the EPA would worry about the displacement of sand on a beach from where the plane lands or the elements of a bulb would be considered dangerous for the environment. So we are our own worst enemy.

I will always feel pride to know that the United States still produces people like Paul Mollar who invented the Skycar, but it will be the Chinese that will most likely take the bold first step.

Rich Hoffman

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
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Fly A SkyCar Today: The Future of Transportation

So how does America become a primary manufacturer again, where we are exporting something the rest of the world wants, instead of being a primary importer? It seems like a daunting task, after all, we’ve lost the car market to the East, the computer age was born here, but now is developing in the East, and we are no longer pushing the space race in America. In order to recapture the technological lead on the world stage, America would have to invent something dramatically, and radically new, that every person on the face of the planet would want.

Let me introduce the M400 Skycar. It’s a personal Skycar with a top speed of 350 MPH and has a range of 750 miles and a flight ceiling of 30,000 feet. It is the future. Now, there are a lot of videos here. This is one of the rare times that I’ll say the videos are more important than the text I provide. So take your time and watch the videos, all of them. And pass this link on to a friend so the word can get out. I believe this is extremely important to the United States in 2011 and on.

I’ve followed the work of Paul Moller for most of my life and am a tremendous fan of his. So much so, that I dedicated a large part of my book The Symposium of Justice to the M400 Skycar in hopes that the military would see the potential for applications, and get the ball rolling.

Paul Moller is the equivalent to the modern-day Henry Ford, or Bill Gates. His idea could be just as explosive if only politics would embrace the concept and accept that highways, manufacturing unions, and current aerospace manufacturers and their government contracts, are becoming obsolete. Can you imagine the changes that would have to take place in the airline industry? Can you imagine the airline industry lobby against the Skycar concept? Do you think GE would want this technology to emerge unless they had their feet already in the game, which they don’t? If the TSA employees join a union, can you imagine the protests trying to protect their jobs that would be leaving as people gained the independence of personal transport and wouldn’t need TSA Security any longer; all the vehicles would be controlled by GPS Systems? Nobody would be running into buildings with these things because they’d just be riding around like a passenger while computers do all the flying. Of the large aerospace companies, only Boeing has entertained the construction of Skycars so far, so the protective interests are actively in place.

I gave a Powerpoint, to John Boehner so he could possibly do something to help with the lobbyist politics that exist on K-Street and other places so the M400 Skycar could enter the marketplace. I also sent the same Powerpoint to the current President and to the head of General Motors, giving them the idea to “re-invent” themselves. They of course are committed to building electric cars, which will soon be irrelevant.

Does it work? Yes! Now that these tests are completed and on the record, even if Moller never gets this M400 into production, the steps have been taken, and a vertical takeoff personal vehicle will emerge for personal use. The sky is the future because it costs less to maintain and eliminates costly infrastructure need. There will always be need for highways for shipping reasons, but personal transportation of 50 miles or more needs to go to the air. That might seem like science fiction, but it’s currently science fact. All that fact needs is for public consciousness to catch up and accept the technology, and that will happen when people understand how they’ll benefit.

Here is the testing of stability in flight, hovering controls. Pretty important so the vehicle can land in a parking lot with reliability. This is one of the most difficult technical feats the vehicle had to overcome, and it has been successful.

So who is Paul Moller? Meet him here. He has testified before congress on this issue and has worked with NASA. This entire infrastructure is in place now. All it will take to bring it to a reality is for you to demand it. Paul will explain the whole concept, just listen, and enjoy.





I personally can’t wait to have one. For my life style, it will be perfect. I could be in New York within a morning, take care of my business, and be back that night for dinner without any difficulty. Same for Atlanta, Chicago and Washington D.C. since all those cities are within 500 miles from Cincinnati. In other places around the country, the trip from LA to Las Vegas would be minutes, and from San Fran to LA under an hour with most of the flight time being accent and descent. New Yorker’s could be out of the city and up into Connecticut, Vermont and Massachusetts within an hour. No traffic because the GPS system would stack all the destinations at different elevations. Weather conditions would be the only variable, but conditions would be favorable over 95% of the time. Only heavy wind and thunderstorms would prevent flight.

Image the trip from London to Paris, which currently takes a few hours by their high-speed rail system that goes under the English Channel from the time you buy your ticket, get on the train, and arrive at your destination. You could literally travel from the British Museum of Natural History and arrive at The Louver Museum in well under an hour including getting into the Skycar and exiting.

However, there is a lot of resistance to the Skycar out there, particularly from the existing infrastructure, and politics and I have a sincere concern that Paul Moller’s dream may be all too reminiscent of one of my personal hero’s, Preston Tucker. If you don’t know the story, Tucker was a GREAT car builder and was WAY ahead of his time. His car was so ahead of its time that the Big Three put pressure on the government to prosecute Tucker though Senator Ferguson, who was taking lobby money from the Big Three, before he could launch his car to the public. Listen to this clip from the film Tucker: A Man and His Dream as delivered by Jeff Bridges.


This is one of my favorite films. If you haven’t seen it you are missing a classic from Executive Producer George Lucas and Director Francis Ford Coppela.

I don’t want to see Paul Moller become a Preston Tucker. I see dramatic parallels between the two men. I think Moller is a lot more level-headed, and more classical engineering minded where Tucker was a salesman first and an engineer second, Moller has the great ability to stay out of trouble.

Eventually, the Big Three automakers would adapt to the innovations that Tucker introduced in 1948, by the 1970’s. If we were a smart society, we’d learn from history and listen to Paul Moller now, and not shove him into the corner to protect the status quo, and put off technology we need today. Because we may lose it to the East, or to a costly two or three decades only to have it emerge in the distant future anyway. It’s really up to the United States.

Tucker died shortly after his trial, which he was of course innocent, but the experience cost him market delivery of his vastly superior automobile. The Big Three grudgingly adopted many of Tucker’s features but not for another 20 years. The Big Three didn’t want to absorb the cost of competition, so they put him out of business. And that is the problem that Paul Moller will have to overcome. It’s not the technical obstacles that are the problem. It’s the political ones that hold back our country. Here is Tucker’s story.




You can have the world you want if you have the courage to put horse-sense ahead of politics. If that happens, then you could have a Skycar to drive and fly within a decade. You may have a job in the Skycar emerging field in the same time frame, and the United States could return to the world stage as a primary manufacturer of something the rest of the world wants, while China and Japan continue to make cars, which will decline in importance, and become a secondary market item similar in usefulness to a motorcycle or bicycle, and certainly high-speed rail which is next to useless compared to Skycar technology.

But I suspect that history will repeat itself and Paul Moller will go the way of Tucker obscurity, and our great nation the United States will too drift into the cloudy recesses of a foggy morning in history, which once lifted everyone, will wonder if the fog had ever been at all.

It’s up to you.

Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com