We believe that you will be traveling from one side of a city to the other in just a few minutes; that it will become common for you to go to work, go shopping, to movies, or a park, more than 100 miles each way each day, in just minutes, instead of hours. That you will never be in a traffic jam again. This new mode of transportation will become available on a large scale within the next 5 years, and in many parts of the world, for as little as $8 per ride. You will also be able to live far from a city, yet be there in minutes, even if you chose to live on the very top of a mountain where there is no road. These new aircraft offer speeds in excess of 300 mph. Other new technologies will allow heavy material to be delivered 24/7 to remote locations, without cutting roads, tunnels or bridges.
We have several projects under Aviation which excitingly promise to use clean energy technologies for the non-polluting transportation of people and goods. Two of the cutting-edge technologies which we intend to finance, develop and license for production are the Moller International Skycar and the HoverXplorer prototype VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) aircraft. In addition, there are at least ten other models in the drafting computers of inventors.
A little history on VTOLs: VTOLs have been around for over 60 years. In addition to the helicopter there are approximately 10 other VTOL aircraft in production today, and 45 models have been built and tested from 1960-1996. Besides the wide variety of helicopters available, VTOL aircraft include the Harrier jump jet, the Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor plane, and many others. The problem until recently has been that these VTOLs cost millions of dollars and thousands of dollars per hour to fly them, but with recent advancement in technologies, vehicles such as the Skycar and HoverXplorer will be available at a fraction of the former price. This reduction in cost comes from simpler technology and large-scale production. Helicopters and planes are produced on average in quantities less than 100 units per year. Skycars and HoverXplorers will be produced in the hundreds of thousands by fully automated factories, bringing their price to less than $250,000. This price includes an artificial intelligence pilot. An AI Pilot does not make mistakes and works 24/7, bringing the next major step in cost reduction and enabling flying in a VTOL for less than you can drive your own car.
Why don’t we already have a Pilotless Flight System?
The two main things that are holding back availability of low cost VTOLs flown by an Artificial Intelligence-Pilot system are governmental inertia and the proper funding to bring them to market. Governments require decades to make a regulatory change as big as this one by themselves. There are also governments who greatly fear the increased freedom that VTOLs and free, unrestricted flight would give their citizens. By initially introducing VTOL flight to less developed countries, first world countries will eventually be forced by popular demand to adopt this technology themselves.
