Don't Just Fly A Drone Fly In One - Naughty Adult Fun Stuff

Don’t just fly a drone, fly in one. Your personal aircraft in aluminium and carbon fibre, powered with eight powerful electric motors, the future is here.

Plus a few details from the source – Jetson Aero

Source: Jetson Aero – see more on their website here

The Jetson ONE is the first affordable EVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) that anyone can now order. Think of it as a jet ski for the sky—an elegant, lightweight craft constructed with carbon fibre and aluminium. The Jetson ONE has eight powerful motors driving an equal number of propellers, and with a massive power output of some 88 KW.

The Jetson ONE features a race-car-inspired safety cell that protects the pilot, can sustain continuous flight with the loss of one motor, has an auto land function (enabled by a LiDAR sensor), and multiple safety features to protect the pilot in case of an emergency.

What’s more, it’s easy to fly. The company claims that owners can learn to pilot one in just five minutes. And if you reside in the U.S., no pilot’s license is required.

While the Jetson ONE represents a great step toward fulfilling Peter Thiel’s futuristic vision, we shouldn’t expect to see the skies filled with EVTOLs anytime soon. The price tag rings in at $92,000, and even then, the entire 2022 and 2023 production is already sold out. If you want one (and who wouldn’t!), you’ll have to wait till 2024 for delivery.

It is still early days for EVTOLs. Jetson is currently a privately held company generating little in the way of revenue today. However, as costs decline and capabilities improve—as they surely will—the company’s fortunes will expand. Given the company’s impressive progress thus far, it is easy to see the potential for exponential growth in the market for flying cars.

Allied Market Research, for example, forecasts that the total global Urban Air Mobility market, which generated $2.3 billion in 2021, will exceed $30 billion by 2031—a CAGR of 30%. The global eVTOL aircraft market segment alone is expected to exceed $4 billion by 2033, increasing from $458.0 million in 2025, also at a healthy rate of 30%.

The other segments comprising the sector are just as exciting. These include air taxis, air shuttles, various forms of personal air vehicles, cargo air vehicles, air ambulance, and medical emergency vehicles, last-mile delivery vehicles, and the military market, which will claim no small share.

And then there is United, which hopes to see the first air taxis in operation by 2024. These are expected to be used to shuttle passengers to hub airports, rather than flying or driving them there with standard planes and cars. As such, investing early in the right companies promises huge gains over the coming years.

And it’s all getting accelerated by investments among the likes of Google’s parent company Alphabet, Toyota, Amazon, Lockheed Martin, Hyundai, and other major players. As such, the space is not only legit, it’s getting crowded with a great many innovative contenders emerging, many advancing and converging adjacent technologies, like Anita Sengupta’s intriguing company, Hydroplane.

Dr. Sengupta’s history exemplifies the brain trust now dedicated to this rapidly developing space. She left her post at NASA to become Senior Vice President of systems engineering at Virgin Hyperloop. And following several years in the battery-powered eVTOL sector, she saw the need for a more evolutionary approach to electric aviation, with hydrogen fuel cell technology, which she is developing now at Hydroplane. There’s much to look forward to here.

All of this is to say that this is an exceptionally exciting and promising space, no longer waiting in the wings of science fiction writers’ imaginative minds.