ColdFusion - Japan's Flying Car – Problems and Solutions

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Starting point is 00:01:08 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 auto plane 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.

Starting point is 00:01:47 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 Told Fusion TV. Last month, Japan showcased a flying car built by the company SkyDrive, who was sponsored by Toyota

Starting point is 00:02:32 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,

Starting point is 00:02:57 Before developing a prototype with wheels, we would like to ensure that the incredibly-deme 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 400,000 US dollars. They hope to decrease the cost by 2030. SkyDrive's unique selling point

Starting point is 00:03:41 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-elect. This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery

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Starting point is 00:04:52 Don't miss the three-episode premiere of the Hulu original series Furious on July 27th, only on Lulu on Disney Plus. 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. So why are electric aircraft becoming a thing? In short, less emissions, cheaper running costs and simpler maintenance.

Starting point is 00:05:33 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 of 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. Electric aircraft could also improve the efficiency of local airports

Starting point is 00:06:10 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. 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 arrangements, though this has become less relevant recently with more people working from home these days.

Starting point is 00:06:49 In the broader picture, it's not all roses for the emerging industry. Let's take a look 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 1,000 kilometres. For example, the Israeli firm Eviation has built a nine passenger aircraft that is rated to fly up to a thousand kilometers at an altitude of 3,000 meters and a speed of 440 kilometres an hour. It's expected

Starting point is 00:07:41 to enter service in 2022. The key here was to use aluminium air batteries instead of the less practical lithium iron 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. My name is Peter Parker, but I'm also Spider-Man. This July, we're faced with a threat. That can be anyone. The world may have forgotten Peter Parker. I'm just a neighbor, friendly neighbor. But he hasn't forgotten them. Sometimes Spider-Man has to do the hard thing. That's my

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Starting point is 00:09:04 Smaller electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft or EV-V-Tol 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, E-V-Tol aircraft, quote, are going to be more energy efficient than helicopters that use a lot of fuel.

Starting point is 00:09:23 but they will be less efficient than cars because they have to lift themselves. From a cost perspective, there 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 carmaker's fuel pump was different. How inconvenient and inefficient would the automotive industry be?

Starting point is 00:09:55 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 Chattamo charging standard from Japan is the oldest. It was originally developed by Nissan for their leaf car,

Starting point is 00:10:19 but it's now redundant in favour of newer standards. Tesla in the United States uses a different standard. It's simple and compact, but proprietary and has a 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 slash T is the newest DC fast charging standard. Despite being only a few years old, it has surpassed the uptake of all other charges.

Starting point is 00:10:49 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 commercial operate an electric light sport aircraft for recreational flight training. Since then, they identified the need for standardized aviation charging to help accelerate the

Starting point is 00:11:32 uptake of electric aircraft. Electroero 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. The TTO and co-founder of Electro Aero, Josh Portlock, 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 finalising 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.

Starting point is 00:12:15 The company recently made a test flight of Australia's first microlight aircraft that employed, this new AS 6968 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.

Starting point is 00:12:48 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 and 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

Starting point is 00:13:30 that current electric vehicle sector has to deal with. While the charging standard is designed to cater up to 250 kilowatts or about a 1 to 4-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 future. Why did it fail in the past? The reasons are power plant was too heavy, power plant was too noisy. Electric motors were not prolific and low weight at 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

Starting point is 00:14:15 and a good aircraft. And unfortunately, they compromise on both of those design challenges. So why will it succeed in the future? Well, things have changed. We now have high power density batteries. We have low mass electric motors. We have low noise fans. We have lightweight carbon composite structures.

Starting point is 00:14:38 And now across the world, 120 of these concept 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 comment 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 the developers doing some cool stuff.

Starting point is 00:15:13 Anyways, my name is DeGogo, 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. Have a good one.

ColdFusion - Japan's Flying Car – Problems and Solutions

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