• Red_October@lemmy.world
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    13 hours ago

    The vehicle, certified for airworthiness and flight-tested over 170 hours with more than 500 takeoffs and landings, is now headed for mass production.

    Jesus fuck please tell me that’s a typo and they left some zeros off. Your average commercial pilot has more than that before any airline is even willing to consider hiring them, that is absolutely not sufficient testing.

    Still, early adopters may face bureaucratic turbulence. Potential buyers must be both licensed drivers and certified pilots.

    No shit. And that is never going to change, becoming a certified pilot is a lot fuckin harder than getting a driver’s license, and for very good reasons. If some BMW-driving cunt can’t even be arsed to use his turn signal do you really want to ease the “bureaucratic turbulence” just so he can fuck up and crash into a packed airliner? These things still have to use runways, the people flying them still need to know how to behave themselves at airports, how to identify and avoid restricted airspace, how to communicate with ATC and how to behave if (let’s be honest, when) they get Intercepted.

    And all of this so you can have a car that’s worse at being a car, and an airplane that’s worse at being an airplane, but hey at least you won’t have to book a rental car at your destination airport, which I remind you they still have to use.

    • ChillPenguin@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      As long as they’re only using smaller airports. Let the millionaires and billionaires have this. It’s like another ocean gate scenario.

      I agree with everything you’re saying though haha.

    • Ibuthyr@lemmy.wtf
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      10 hours ago

      I still don’t get how these companies keep getting funded. There’s literally no way these things will ever become a thing. It’s simply ridiculous.

      • GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml
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        8 hours ago

        I’d be willing to bet if you put a calendar reminder in one year to check back on this you’d find that this car did not actually reach the mass-produced stage of industry.

      • Red_October@lemmy.world
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        8 hours ago

        Investors and venture capitalists fronting money and riding the Hype-Go-Round, but when the music stops and the lights go out someone’s going to be out a shitload of money.