Proposal for flying car cable gondola system
Maybe I'm "Over my head"
eVTOL’s (electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles) — colloquially called flying cars currently have 2 pretty big limitations. They have limited range and they can’t handle bad weather as well as helicopters or planes.
These vehicles are improving every year, as battery technology and control systems get better. But I think we could operationalize these vehicles without fully solving for these limitations by utilizing a cable car system.
If an eVTOL was able to hitch itself to a suspended cable, the cable could transport the eVTOL and provide it charge.
The cables could be made more efficient if they used maglev technology similar to bullet trains.
The eVTOL’s function would now be getting from point A to the cable, then the cable takes them the majority of their trip, then from the cable to point B.
If there is sufficient cable coverage, this eliminates the need for massive range. If the attachment of the car to the cable is secure, the weather risk will only be present when flying to and from the cable (which ideally will be a small percentage of total travel time).
A couple other considerations:
Would cables be cheaper to maintain than roads or rail?
Would a web of suspended cables be less disruptive to the environment than roads? (maybe better for terrestrial animals but worse for birds)
Scifi depictions of flying cars — from the Jetsons to Bladerunner — show stable vehicles flying in unison like a modern day highway in the air. But maybe the future of mass transit will look more like a cable car.