Backed by billions in venture capital and a recent IPO, one startup aims to have its flying taxi on the market in three years. While they may be ahead of the pack, they’re not alone. Is this the decade we finally get our Jetsons car?
The most obvious reality check draws on our experiences around the original flying car – the helicopter. Helicopters are really loud. They transit CBD skylines every day, and from 100 metres a launching helicopter has a volume of 90 decibels – about the same as a power lawn mower. Multiply that by hundreds of thousands, and it’s immediately apparent that a world full of flying cars would be deafening. Conversation in public would become impossible. Birds, already adapting their song to the higher ambient noise levels in urban areas, would fall silent, unable to
