Kobe Bryant basically commuted by helicopter, when it was convenient. It may have even taken off and landed at his house, but probably not exactly at all of his destinations. Is a “flying car” fundamentally that much different?

I think the difference is that a helicopter is extremely technical to fly requiring complex and expensive training, and the eVTOL is supposed to be extremely simple to fly. Also the eVTOL in principle is really cheap to make if you just consider the materials and construction costs- probably eventually much cheaper than a car.

I was curious so I looked up how much you can buy the cheapest new helicopters for, and they are cheaper than an eVTOL right now- the XE composite is $68k new, and things like that can be ~25k used. I'm shocked one can in principle own a working helicopter for less than the price of a 7 year old Toyota Camry.

Nothing that flies in the air is that safe for its passengers or its surroundings - not without restrictions placed on it and having a maintenance schedule that most people would not be comfortable following.

Most components are safety critical in ways that their failure can lead to an outright crash or feeding the pilot false information leading him to make a fatal mistake. Most cars can be run relatively safely even with major mechanical issues, but something as 'simple' as a broken heater on a pitot tube (or any other component) can lead to a crash.

Then there's an issue of weather - altitude, temperature, humidity, wind speed can create an environment that makes it either impossible, unsafe, or extremely unpleasant - imagine flying into an eddy current that stalls out the aircraft, making your ass drop a few feet.

Flying's a nice hobby, and I have great respect to people who can make a career out of it, but I'd definitely not get into these auto-piloted eVTOLs, nor should people who don't know what they are doing.

Edit: Also unlike helicopters, which can autorotate, and fixed wing aircraft, that can glide, eVTOLs just drop out of the sky.

I would expect eVTOLs to be capable of greater redundancy than a helicopter or fixed wing aircraft - with no single point of failure that could make them drop from the sky. It would add little weight to have two or more independent electrical and motor systems each capable of making a semi controlled landing on its own, but must coordinate to provide the full rated lift. Marketing materials claim the Blackfly has triple redundancy. I suppose one could have software logic glitches that cause all modular systems to respond inappropriately to conditions in unison.

eVTOLs are going to be much more expensive to build than helicopters because they have far more stringent weight/strength requirements due to low battery energy density (relative to aviation fuel).

The idea is to have far cheaper operating costs. Electric motors are far more efficient than ICE, so you should have much cheaper energy costs. Electric motors are also simpler than ICE so you should have cheaper maintenance with less required downtime compared to helicopters.

Of course, most of this is still being tested and worked on. But we are getting closer to having these get certified (FAA just released the SFAR for eVTOL, the first one since the 1940s).

But I'm sure running costs (aviation fuel), hanger costs, maintenance costs, cost to maintain pilot license are far more expensive, compared to driving a car.

I'm talking about buying the absolute cheapest possible used experimental helicopter- homemade by a stranger from a cheap kit. I would posit that if I were willing to take that risk- probably buying a model with know design and reliability issues to save money- I'd also just park it in the backyard, skip the maintenance and run it on the cheapest pump gas I can find!

The ones I'm seeing in the 20k range are mostly the "Mini 500." Wikipedia suggests that maybe as few as 100 were built, with 16 fatalities thus far (or is it 9- which it says in a different part of the article?). But some people argue all of those involved "pilot error."

I suppose choosing to fly the absolute cheapest homemade experimental aircraft kit notorious for a high fatality rate is technically a type of pilot error?

Can you imagine thousands of flying cars flying low over urban areas?

Skill level needed for "driving" would increase by a lot, noise levels would be abysmal, security implications would be severe (be they intentional or mechanical in nature), privacy implications would result in nobody wanting to have windows.

This is all more-or-less true for drones as well, but their weight is comparable to a todler, not to a polar bear. I firmly believe they'll never reach mass usage, but not because they're impossible to make.

That does sound truly awful. I already hate the noise of internal combustion cars and am looking forward to cars getting quieter.

I had a friend who used to (still does) fly RC helicopters; that requires quite a bit of skill. Meanwhile, I think anybody can fly a DJI drone. I think that's what will transform "flying" when anybody, not just a highly skilled pilot, can "drive" a flying car (assuming it can be as safe as a normal car... which somehow I doubt)

Yeah, as an NLP researcher I was reading the post with interest until I found that gross oversimplification about LLMs, which has been repeatedly proved wrong. Now I don't trust the comments and predictions on the other fields I know much less about.