40kg of fuel per minute is a lot but airplanes carry a lot of people.
Web searches suggest a 737-800 gets about 0.5mpg at cruise. With 189 passengers in a one-class layout that’s 95mpg per passenger. With 162 in a two-class layout that’s 81mpg per passenger.
This is better than a single person in a car but four people in a Prius gets 50mpg * 4 = 200 mpg.
Sounds like a train.
The robo taxi links the last few miles to transit.
I recently travelled from my house in Seattle to my office in SF without ever getting in a car. I walked more in the airport than I did anywhere else.
Home -> Walk 11 min -> Metro Bus -> light rail -> SEA -> SF -> BART -> Walk 2 min to Hotel.
Next time I go down I’m going to take Amtrak. I couldn’t this time because it was full. In 2024 360,000 people rode that route on 730 trips for an average of about 500 people per trip. Looks like Amtrak gets between 0.6 and 2mpg. That’s 300mpg to 1000mpg per person which is better than a Prius’ 200mpg at 40mph.
Seattle to SF is 1019 miles. At 40mph that’s 25 hours, which is an hour slower than the Amtrak schedule.
Yes. Electric self driving cars are why I am not too concerned about all the tunnel and highway building. They are train tracks of the future.
This is what vexes me about the lack of emphasis on highway self-driving. Everyone's obsessed with robo taxis.
An overnight trip that's automated could go at 40 mph and get seriously good gas mileage. I mean man with four people would probably get almost 100 miles per gallon.
And this would eliminate a lot of short-range flights
It should be a lot easier to implement than having to worry about a whole class of problems that robo taxis in cities have