Just waiting for that lake to freeze up

I guess it depends why you want to go off the grid. Just remember to bring extra water.

I’ve been in a full scale mockup of this thing, it just seems too small to be of any use.

These rims are gaudy, need to class up this car if it’s going to look like a Bentley.

What’s your point? Every car is rated the same way so it’s pretty comparable. Think of it this way, it will have 50 more power and 50 more torques than an sti.

The picture of the production car is not flattering but they look great in person

We talking variable pitch as in angle of attack of the blades or full blown helicopter style control? Just how nimble do they intend this thing to be? I expect this thing to be old Cadillac of air travel, not the S2000.

Helicopters use a swash plate which is a pretty complicated mechanism. The benefit of quad rotors is you can control attitude without a swash plate by varying speed. If you cannot vary speed and don’t have a swash plate you pretty much have to rely on gyros for stability and attitude control

Unless they have a crazy gyro system to control the attitude you can’t have one motor driving all 4 props. You pointed out some really good things but I still don’t understand why “hybrid” Best case scenario I can think of is one big fuel burning generator and 4 electric motors but even then I don’t see this being a…

Oh gotcha. The only thing I know about trains is that they are cool.

So you’re thinking the turbine engine only generates electricity and does not ever drive the props? It’s an interesting idea.

When I was in grad school there was a student project to build a hybrid engine and the professor really wanted us to jam it into our UAV. The energy density of the batteries is just not good enough to make it useful especially when faced with the detriment of added size, weight and complexity. I can see your point…

Neither of these things have to be too concerned with weight reduction. Diesel subs charge batteries because they cannot run on diesel under water. Speculating on trains but they probably can regenerate energy when braking as well as use clean electric energy in metropolitan areas and maybe even run off a grid while…

Just pointing out, flying in hover mode you’re fucked regardless whether it has 2 or 4 rotors. On the other hand aircraft (and regs vary for size) have to meet certain performance in engine out scenarios

Why is it a hybrid? There’s no regenerative braking when you fly

Probably a ground clearance/wing span issue that limited the size of the props

I’m late to the party but I had the pleasure of having Joe Tanner as an instructor in college. He was on the STS-97 mission that deployed the first set of solar arrays. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-97

One thing I thought about is the center of mass will shift closer to the middle by replacing the V-12 and lighten up as well so the suspension would need an adjustment. Might as well use that opportunity to get a little more damping in there and keep the car from leaning and bobbing so much.

That’s exactly what I wanted to do but with an american V-8. Then I realized I don’t have the money, time, know how, or garage space. But some day I will attempt this.

They also came with a sluggish 3-speed auto. Combine that with the teeter-totter like suspension the car was more like a boat than car. I still want one though, I think the cars are beautiful.