Originally Posted by
neville_nobody
However neither of those types are certified. My point is that for such a radical design, if aerospace companies are having problems over a 20 year design phase then why do Uber think they are going to get this up and running with electric motors in 5 years??? Why not just stick to a fixed rotor? It's not like you need speed to fly around a 60-100NM radius which is what most cities would be.
I agree that the 5 year timeframe is somewhere on the optimistic side of realistic but I don't think that precludes the use of tiltrotor concepts. The energy efficiency required for electric flight will, I think, pretty much preclude the use of conventional rotorcraft although some are trying
As you can hear on this video, the noise profile of the R44 isn't much changed by deleting the Lycoming. Noise will be another one of the huge hurdles to overcome and rotorcraft aren't the ideal thing in this regard