Cora – Kitty Hawk's prototype air taxi [video]
Contrary to almost every comment here so far, this is both innovative and energy efficient.Let's talk energy efficiency first. Once it's up in the air, it's has a similar profile to a normal single engine airplane. A Cirrus SR22 can go 1,200 miles on 80 gallons of gas. That's roughly speaking 15 miles per gallon - better than many pickup trucks or large SUVs. And that's while going 180 mph. Slower is more fuel efficient.This aircraft is definitely going to make noise on takeoff and landing, but it's not going to make much noise while cruising.The Dodecacopter/regular aircraft hybrid solves a lot of problems. Once it is in cruise mode, it is as safe as a regular small aircraft. Importantly, unlike a quadcopter, it does not crash immediately on loss of engine power - it can glide to a landing somewhere, or use a parachute, or land with its Dodecacopter rotors.Unlike a rotor craft, this aircraft is very energy efficient while cruising.The Dodecacopter side lets it take off and land in even more places than a helicopter. It looks like it has redundancy for any two rotors/motors to go out. If this happens on takeoff, you fly to an airport to land. If this happens on landing, you leave the aircraft on the ground until someone comes and fixes you. You skip all the transmission and cyclic complexity of a helicopter. This is going to cost a whole lot less to maintain than a helicopter.In short, this has potential to be way better than either a helicopter or a small airplane. Even ignoring the air-taxi business, there's a market for this aircraft.So let's flip to the business side. An easy target for making these at scale would be $500,000 per aircraft. (Might be able to half that, but lets be conservative). Operating costs at scale, max $100/hr, could be one quarter that.On the revenue side, this would replace a two hour trip across a city in traffic with a fifteen minute flight. Unless you've flow small aircraft before it's hard to appreciate just how much faster it is not to use roads. There's definitely going to be some market for this - that's worth money.