The real-life version of "The Fifth Element": Can Uber really fill the skies with flying cars within three years?

Whenever the traffic system is paralyzed and the city is playing the "congestion game", you must have thought more than once, if only my car could fly, so I can quickly fly away from this congested "city parking lot".

Perhaps in a few years, your car will really take off, just like in " The Fifth Element " directed by Luc Besson , where private cars and taxis travel in an orderly manner on invisible tracks above the city.

Recently, Mark Moore, a senior NASA engineer newly hired by Uber, said that flying cars may become a reality in 1 to 3 years.

A land-air vehicle or a small aircraft?

Before we talk about flying cars, we should first clarify a concept. What we usually think of as flying cars are often amphibious vehicles that can run on the ground and take off at any time at critical moments.

But the flying car concept proposed by Uber looks more like a small aircraft that takes off and lands vertically.

This starts with Moore, the new engineering director of Uber Elevate. Before joining Uber, he had worked at NASA for 30 years as the chief technology officer of free mobility research. He once wrote an article called "Personal Flying Vehicle", which mainly proposed a conceptual aircraft and explored the feasibility and practical value of short-distance, urban vertical take-off and landing aircraft.

Judging from the conceptual drawings, the vertical take-off and landing car is far from the traditional car shape and looks more like a small private plane.

Uber's vision is to take traditional Uber users from their homes to a "vertical take-off and landing" point near their homes, then lift off, cross the town, and reach the nearest vertical take-off and landing point to the office. And Uber said that the cost of each unit of the aircraft is as high as $120, so the company will produce it at a low rate of 12 units per year. Each aircraft has a design life of 25-27k hours, which can support 13 years of service and travel 400,000 miles per year.

From the existing concept, Uber's flying car is not cool at all, it is not even as good as the Transition model launched by the previous startup Terrafugia. It is more like a car, and it can really fly.

Transition has two seats and drives like a traditional sports plane in the sky. It has an air range of 640 kilometers and a maximum speed of 160 kilometers per hour. Its wings can be folded to reduce the footprint on land. Although it can fly, it is equipped with a series of automotive safety features, such as airbags, pre-tensioned seat belts, collision crumple zones, etc. Its last line of defense is a parachute, which can land the car safely in an emergency.

Although the design is not cool, the Transition looks more like a car.

How far is reality from the scenes in "The Fifth Element"?

Of course, the premise for us to discuss this issue is that the traffic control policy allows cars to fly into the sky.

Except for some amphibious combat vehicles for military purposes, vehicles with cross-border capabilities are actually very rare. Because of the different laws of motion, the design principles of airplanes, cars, and ships are necessarily different. Moreover, many aspects often contradict each other, making it impossible to be comprehensive.

Designers can only choose to compromise on one aspect and make the other function barely usable. If they must take both into account, they will ultimately end up with a poorly performing, hybrid vehicle.

For example, the characteristic curves of car engines and aircraft engines are different, so it is difficult to use one machine for both purposes. However, if two different engines are used for flying and driving on land, the weight of the car will increase significantly, making it difficult to take off. In addition, the inconvenience caused by accessories such as wing propellers when the car is driving on land cannot be ignored.

It is predicted that Uber Elevate will be officially launched in 2021, but if cars can really fly into the sky, it will not only change people’s travel methods, but also change the structure of the city, just like the city constructed in "The Fifth Element".

Of course, Moore also admitted, "There are many obstacles at present, and technology is only one of them. Each flying car company needs to negotiate independently with suppliers to lower prices and lobby regulators to approve the use of aircraft and relax air traffic restrictions." He believes that Uber has 55 million active passengers, which is enough to show that flying aircraft have a huge, profitable and safe market.

"If there's not a business case that makes economic sense, then it's just a crazy tech play and not a smart investment," Moore said.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.