I had a chance to fly a simulator of the Beta Technologies VTOL airplane (they're a PartsBox customer). I went from horizontal flight into hover, and my guide said "oh, by the way, you are consuming a megawatt right now".

A megawatt. To hover.

That really opened my eyes to the reality: unless we have unlimited, clean and nearly free fusion power, flying cars are not going to be a thing.

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tekacs an hour ago | parent [-]

This conclusion is... kinda absurd.

In any reasonable setup, hovering would be a rare, rare operation (like 30-60 seconds during takeoff and landing), with most of the time spent in wing-borne forward flight – which'd be _wildly_ lower power usage, more like 200-250kW tops. About ~par with staying in continuous acceleration in an EV. More for sure, but not nearly as insane as what you're pointing to.

... and this is exactly where better batteries would help – being able to hold that power level for longer so you could actually go places in earnest without untenable mass.

	▲	scottLobster 25 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Is it? If we're talking about a future where EVTOL takes over for passenger cars, there will be air traffic jams with delays that require extended circling and likely hovering. There's a reason all the EVTOL startups show individual vehicles landing in pristine fields, and it's the same reason car advertisements show one car on a closed course instead of I-95 at 3pm on a Friday