*Snip*
Now you're talking. Civilian commercial uptake will push the military research to make the next leap in technology. Luxury buyers will want the bigger boost of bio fuel, in the absence of a current alternative.
Part of the problem with electric is that it's "too sexy.". Tesla has everyone convinced we can jump directly into electric technology without any use for hybrids. It turned out electric was good enough for city buses and urban commuter cars. It's even useful for slow moving propeller aircraft, but people have no idea how much energy it takes. We neglect the long range applications. If we had electric charging stations floating in the sky or mounted on giant posts, like in the Jetsons cartoon, then maybe we could deal with the short range.
What I propose is that the diesel or gasoline engine generate the electricity to top off the batteries at all times, like a Diesel electric locomotive. There are other manned drone designs out there (see the Guild of Icarus at the Meta Clubs section of this forum) that look better and bigger. As shown here,this vehicle is good only for exactly what they showed in the video: play at the beach.
If you're living at a resort town in Costa Rica and Mexico, maybe you could use it to ride into town, 5 minutes away. Parking so that it doesn't get stolen would be a great challenge, unless you can land on the roof of someone you trust (without getting tangled in electric cables, that will be an interesting problem to solve), but I can see that use right now for that type of vehicle. $92K ? Yeah, it's a rich man's toy. Reminds me of that submersible watercraft that looks like a dolphin.
We should be able to size it up, and make it into a closed or semi open vehicle to improve the aerodynamics; make it a two passenger craft as a minimum, and mount the petrol tank and diesel generator somewhere. I think that's still light enough to work as an 8 rotor design with existing propellers and motors, and it would make this toy much more useful. Still a rich man's toy, but more like a convertible roadster, and enough to whet the appetite of consumers.
These vehicles will not fly in high density urban environments like Mexico City and New York, unless we can make this design into an autonomously flying drone such as the proposed aerial taxi in Dubai (?) The problem is that urban environments present too many obstacles at landing and takeoff, including other drivers, passenger aircraft, police helicopters and people flying unmanned drones! And I didn't even mention birds.
What I would propose for actual commuter and long range vehicles is use of swarm technology to have all manned drones communicating with one another, and working from digital maps of the city or areas of high traffic. "Highways in the sky" would be generated from chaos theory, to manage the traffic. Highways literally could change from day to day, to adapt to a changing landscape, construction sites, etc. This is a lot of work and won't happen overnight, but if people really want this,they need to start now.
