Game of Thrones for the Self-Driving Car Market: How the Battle Lines Are Being Drawn - June 9, 2018
Facebook Latest FAANG To Enter Race For Super-Powered AI Chips - 21 hours ago
UK Surgery Robotics Company Latest Next Gen Tech Firm To Prepare For IPO - 1 day ago
Concerns Machine Learning AI Spot False Correlations In Cancer Data - February 20, 2019
The Dangerous Technology Question: Will Tech Finally Wipe Out Humanity? - February 19, 2019
New Drug Could Re-Fire Brain Cells And Reverse Age-Related Memory Loss - February 16, 2019
AI With Potential Fake News Application Kept Under Wraps On Misuse Fears - February 16, 2019
CRISPR Gene Editing: We Could Eliminate Malaria But Should We? - February 15, 2019
UK Police Force Trials ‘Risk of Reoffending’ AI - February 13, 2019
New Collaborative AI Game Sees Machine Learning Cooperate With Humans Rather Than Crush Them - February 13, 2019
Facebook launching “unsend” feature in Messenger - February 8, 2019
Google’s Larry Page Is Quietly Becoming Flying Car Kingpin
He is already arguably the single most influential man in the online world but it looks as if Google-founder Larry Page has similar ambitions around the latest technology in the world of transport too. It has recently been revealed that the CEO of Alphabet (Google’s parent company) has quietly been buying up controlling stakes in several of the start-ups at the cutting edge of developing flying car technology.
It is well known that big transportation technology and aerospace companies such as Uber and Airbus have been allocating resources to the development of flying car-type vehicles and the infrastructure that would be a necessary component to their use. However, with the prototypes that have been developed by Uber, Airbus and Joby, a high profile start-up in the space, are largely at the experimental stage, Page appears to have stolen a march on his competitors.
Online tech and science media ‘The Verge’ recently reported that they had uncovered Page’s involvement in a company named ‘Opener’, a well-advanced flying car start-up that has just come out of ‘stealth mode’. That makes Opener the third such company that Page has invested in with the tech titan already known to hold stakes in Kitty Hawk and air taxi project ‘Cora’.
Page now controls three of the world’s most advanced flying car projects. With the Google boss attempting to adopt a low profile approach to the acquisitions, refraining from discussing his investments directly, observers are being left to speculate what his game plan is. The multiple nature of the investments is apparently not with a view to merging companies or achieving synergies from cross-over. Indeed, while Closer and Kitty Hawk both have offices in Pablo Alto a few blocks from each other, the companies are said to have virtually no contact and compete for the attention and funding of their mutual lead-investor. That leaves two options. Either Page is hedging his bets by investing in several promising potential market leaders developing different kinds of technology and vehicle or he is hoping to dominate a potentially huge new market.
But how close is the genuine prospect of commercially operating flying cars? Most experts believe that, unlike self-driving cars, airborne vehicles becoming a common site above our cities is likely something that is still decades away. Battery technology is one major bottleneck. Flying cars are likely to be electric if they are to be low-noise emission and economically viable. But flying requires a lot of energy and current battery technology is not able to provide enough power for flights that represent more than a ‘hop’ if the vehicle is to be able to take off and land vertically. The latter quality is considered to be necessary if flying cars are to be practical within an urban context. The kind of battery that would provide a few hours of flight time would currently be so heavy that it would be self-defeating.
The necessary regulatory regime and ‘airway’ code is also a considerable obstacle to be overcome. In Japan, Tokyo’s administration has formed an advisory council to start preparing a regulatory framework with a view to running flying car pilot projects during the 2020 Olympics to be hosted in the city. However, any mass-scale adoption of the technology will obviously be problematic in terms of creating a safe set of rules and regulations. No city administration other than Tokyo has really given serious consideration to a future with flying cars at this point in time.
Page’s adoption of the technology sector clearly demonstrates a belief that flying cars will one day become a reality. In recent years, technology developments often happen at a pace much quicker than expected. However, at this point it would seem unlikely that flying cars will be taking to the skies in significant numbers in the immediately foreseeable future.