"Vertical Takeoff and Landing aircraft are on track to provide urban air transit within the next few years, targeting the high-margin commuters who traditionally buy premium vehicles."

Okay. So... flying cars? Don't think so. Robotaxis make sense where taxis make sense and you can get by without a car already. The demographic decline is real.

There's the simple physics of a vtol craft when landing needing to push down a lot of a air very fast just to lift an average human - plus the weight of the craft itself. There's a reason helicopters today don't land on street corners even if there's no rotor clearance issues. And these "personal" VTOLs don't seem any lighter than a helicopter of a similar size - for example the "Air One" is twice the mass of a Robinson R22 - ~400 vs ~970 kg empty.

The idea that they would be common enough to seriously disrupt "personal transport", even restricting to the "premium" market as it's known today is crazy. Imagine a fancy party where every 10 seconds everyone on the red carpet is being blown away by the backwash of someone landing - also disrupting everyone else trying to land there at the same time.

They are talking about unmanned drones that operate as flying taxis. They have them in China. We will never have flying cars after 9/11 showed how flying objects can damage property.

It's not 9/11 that will kill it but people not wanting 2 tons of metal flying overhead. The occasional helicopter is one thing. Having hundreds of these flying around, when one can clip a building from a gust of wind and go plummeting into bystanders is a no-go.

Not to mention the noise. Residential neighborhoods will ban these immediately (and some won't have a choice because they have, you know, trees.)