8. Flying cars: how long until we see them everywhere? Feat. Akash Mishra, UAV pilot for eHang.

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): By the mid half of the century, 70% of the population will be living in urban areas.

Cities become more and more congested and there is no more space on the roads.

There is no more way you can build the roads. But what this urban, this, AUM will help is decongest that cities. Now you don't have to worry about because now you can live in the suburbs and take flying cars to your office and you are there in 10 minutes.

[00:00:40] Mizter Rad: All right, beautiful people. Thank you so much for being here tonight. I'm very happy and grateful that today I have my man, Akash Mishra, joining us from, I believe, France. And he's gonna talk about a very interesting topic that is unmanned flying vehicles. A k a flying cars, flying taxis. I'm super excited to have Akash today.

Akash, how are you doing?

[00:01:07] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): I'm good, thank you. Inviting me here Mizter. It's, uh, it's a really interesting topic, topic to talk about. You know, as you said, flying cars in, in layman terms, but in technical terms, we call it urban aerial mobility.

[00:01:19] Mizter Rad: Urban area mobility. Does it encompass more than just the cars?

Uh, Is it, is it a whole system? How advanced's the whole system already?

[00:01:30] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Exactly. It. Encomp encompasses entire ecosystem, you know, from, uh, delivery drones to medical deliveries, courier deliveries, food deliveries, even uh, air taxis. Right. And when you talk about like, uh, flying cars, You can say it's, it's, it's kind of a layman term to explain.

It's a flying car. But, uh, in technical terms, when governments or authorities refer to it, they're referred to as urban aerial vehicles, UAVs.

[00:01:55] Mizter Rad: Okay. Urban aerial vehicles. And so tell me more about... Akash, tell me more how, how you got here. I mean, what's your background? Tell us a bit more your story so that we can, you know, get, get into the, into the more interesting topics, after that. But I wanna, I wanna have a little background check to see, how we got here Akash.

[00:02:16] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Actually, it's very, very, very, very interesting. I come from a very diverse background and, to start off with, I have worked as an IT developer. After that, I was working as an astronomer. Then I was the few of the initial employees for Uber India. To launch Uber South Market. And then I had my own startup, which was related to logistics and freight, uh, uh, which was on demand for big trucks.

And I wanted to explore more about drone logistics. That's how I was searching for a master's to, to pursue, my career in this. And I ended up in Toulouse. I did my masters from ENAC - (Ecole Nationale de l'Aviation Civile) Toulouse in unmanned aerial vehicles. And after I finished my masters, I was work, I did my internship at Sopra Steria. Basically my project was integration of ATM and UTM. Uh, air traffic management and unmanned traffic management.

I think we'll come to that part later. And yeah.

[00:03:09] Mizter Rad: Yeah. You can come to that part later. Yeah, absolutely. Because I, I'm not sure if I understand what the terms mean, but I, I mean, I have an, I can imagine, but maybe you can go deeper into that later. Yeah.

[00:03:20] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Yeah. And after that. After I finished my internship, I was in touch with few people from, from EHang, and that's how I ended up in EHang as a engineer and a drone pilot.

Here. Basically I pilot like few systems for EHang, like the big one, E 216. I also pilot the E hang Drone Swamp. And the logistics drone.

[00:03:40] Mizter Rad: Okay. Beautiful. You have to explain me all that. I guess those are different models.

For the people that are listening live to this conversation on Twitter. We normally, you know, have a conversation with, with the speaker and we are open to questions, anytime or later on. If you want to jump in, you just have to raise your hand and I'll give you the mic. It's a pretty open conversation. Normally we leave the bigger questions from the public for the end, but feel free to interrupt if you find that appropriate in any moment.

So, Akash, you were talking about the different models. But before jumping into, into that, and now that you, you know, we have a little bit of background of where you come from. Maybe you can tell us a bit more why were you interested in this topic specifically, you as a person. You come from a startup, you said you worked in Uber. You also had your own company as a, you, you were an entrepreneur.

Why did you decide to move into this, area of, uh, the market?

[00:04:39] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Let's put it this way. I was, I was pretty young and I love being involved in the new technologies which are coming up. And the drone technology, which, which has been, and which has taken shape in past previous years. It has a huge, huge potential.

And me being an entrepreneur coming by heart, I had to take a shot at it. So that's how I ended up in this sphere. As you look at drones, right. Drones are, it's a very interesting space. It's not something new. Drones have been like, uh, you have been here for like hundreds of years. You won't believe it.

Like the first, uh, unmanned aircraft to fly was in 1920. And, even in 1879, if you see in Austria War War in Vienna, they used, uh, you can say double codes, unmanned vehicles to hover the city. Right. And, recently, within the past a hundred years, you know, the, the drones have been very active in the military sphere.

The interesting, interesting phenomena started happening somewhere around two, uh, 2006. When people realized like what could be the potential and for these kind of services would be. And, and governments around the world started testing for medical deliveries because there are a lot of areas which, which are not reachable by aircraft or by helicopter, or which are very hard to reach.

So they, uh, they came up with an idea why not use the drones? And from there, the commercial applications of the drones started and started picking up.

[00:05:56] Mizter Rad: And why, why do you think, like, if, if we had first drones around the twenties, why do you think it has taken so long? I could also imagine some answers, but I wanna hear from you, why do you think it has been taking so long to really become a commercial thing? ... having flying cars all around the city.

I mean, if you look at the Jetsons, I, when I was a kid, I used to watch the Jetsons, the, the, this, these cartoons. And I found it fascinating that they could fly over the city and just like land on their house, there was like mounted on, on this huge tower and every house was sort of on the sky. As a kid I loved that. But we, we still don't see it in reality. What's what's happening?

[00:06:37] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): It's if, if you look at it in, in twenties and thirties, what was happening, very interesting things were happening. There was a lot going on. It was the first industrial revolution. People were figuring out, like getting up with the new cars.

If you, if you see the first lima, which happened in 1925. People were experimenting with aircrafts. People were experimenting with the unmanned vehicles. And it, it more, it, it's, it's more towards the policy. And more towards, you know, integration, and, and the safety of the airspace. If you see the number of accidents in the aviation that was happening at that, at moment of time, we were very, very high. And I should not say, but so much of accident that happened, that aviation evolved to be such a safe space to be in, right now.

And so the governments were not willing enough to pursue that as... Pursue, that as in as, as a safety option, you know. It's more towards the government policies, more towards the safety and more towards the condition of the airspace at that moment of time. But if you look at it today, the technology has basically miniaturized.

If you look at the drones at that time, they were basically planes, big planes, which cannot be used for travel inside the cities. Right. And they wanted to make it more and more safer option for the people to travel around the, around the country or around the globe.

[00:07:50] Mizter Rad: So you're saying it went from, you know, being large aircrafts to smaller, vehicle like flying vehicles or drones.

[00:07:58] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Exactly.

[00:07:59] Mizter Rad: And the, and the policy and it's safe and the safety of, of this flying cars has been like the, the main thing of why we don't have them in a commercial space as...

[00:08:10] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): exactly. If you look at aviation today, aviation is a, if the safety parameter of aviation is around 10 to five minus nine, that means you have one in a billion chance of having an accident in aviation today.

And we have reached them, not just by, by like tomorrow. It has been on development over hundreds of years. And now the flying taxis, as you say, are coming into the picture. It'll take another five to 10 years to integrate them safely into the airspace.

[00:08:36] Mizter Rad: And what's missing? What's missing right now?

I mean, you say that one in a billion in aviation is the probability of having an accident. How... do you know the number for, for this kind of vehicles at the moment?

[00:08:47] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Uh, it's, it's, it's, it's varying between, it depends upon which vehicle you are, uh, going. It's very between 10 to power minus three to 10 to power minus six.

So until, unless we reach the safety number of 10 to power minus nine, uh, the commercial operations would be hard to start .

[00:09:00] Mizter Rad: And, does it depend from region to region, I believe? In terms of the policy. Are some, some regions that have maybe stricter policies than others?

[00:09:09] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Exactly it there. There are a lot of factors involved.

It's not just a policy, there's a design factor involved as well. If you see there is no homogeneous design available at the moment. Everybody is experimenting with it. What works and what does not work. If you see at the aviation, there's...

[00:09:22] Mizter Rad: sorry to interrupt you. When you say everybody's experimenting, you mean different companies, different manufacturers?

[00:09:28] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Exactly.

Different manufacturers coming up with different design concepts, coming up with different types of engines, making it more secure and safe. See, so first is the design. Second is like, as you said, the policy, the, this is something new and aviation, where have been like alert here for hundreds of years. So it, it needs to be safely integrated into the skies, right?

So it's not something, which can be done overnight. And third is the technology itself, which is evolving at a very high pace. It'll take another few years for the technology to reach that mark, to reach that safety level. So that we can put people inside and like have a safe flight over the city. Point A to point B.

[00:10:05] Mizter Rad: When it comes to like the different regions in the world, I believe that, if I'm not mistaken, China has taken the lead in terms of using the vehicles already somehow in a commercial purpose. Is that correct? Are, are we seeing that in Europe or elsewhere in the world or am I wrong completely here?

[00:10:22] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): You're not wrong. It is just the, how fast the processes are. But, uh, Europe is not far behind. If you know, 2024 Olympics in France, uh, they're trying to launch the air taxi operations. Which will uh...

[00:10:35] Mizter Rad: oh, that's cool.

[00:10:36] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Yeah. Which will ferry people from airport to the, to the hotels and... it totally depends upon, you know, how, how it, it, it, it's historical. It's where the current country or where the region functions, you know. And China has been going pretty fast when it comes to technology. But, they are still, yet far behind launching commercial passenger operations. It, it hasn't started yet, but they will be the first one I think to, to, to start.

[00:10:59] Mizter Rad: So you think China will be the first region to start doing that because they they've been trying and testing more than other regions?

[00:11:06] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Exactly. Exactly.

[00:11:07] Mizter Rad: Okay. And when you talk about the, I, I find it super interesting that France is trying to have these, flying shuttles from airports to hotels in the the next Olympic Games.

[00:11:20] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Yep.

[00:11:20] Mizter Rad: When I imagine a flying car, flying drone that is transporting people, and I have watched some videos of EHang. I see that the vehicles need some sort of space to land, and I, I understand that they go vertically up and down. They don't need to like, they don't need like a runway, like, like an airplane.

But maybe you can explain us a bit more how, how it works. What kind of space it needs. When I think about Paris, having these flying vehicles, my negative side of my mind thinks: oh wow, so how many taxis are gonna be there? What kind of routes do they take? Who's gonna know, you know, what kind of streets are there in the air so that the pilots know how to manage this? How, how does all this work? Maybe you can take us a bit around that.

[00:12:05] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Sure. So if, if you look at the new regulations, right, these places where, which will be specifically designated for them to take off the land are called as Vertiports. Now here, the, now here, the thing is these, these vehicles do not require a huge amount of space.

It can be 20 meters of circle where they can take off and land. If you follow the proper, uh, proper regulations and stuff.

[00:12:26] Mizter Rad: You mean like a 20 meters diameter of maybe the top of a building for example, or...?

[00:12:31] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Exactly. Top of the buildings. It can be even, if you see a lot of parking lots. It can be converted into the Vertiports.

A lot of, most of the cities have lot of, uh, Heliports also integrated into the city ecosystem. Those can be also used as a landing and takeoff point. So infrastructure, I would say most of it is already there. We just ha have to repurpose it. And as, as you talk about another thing about what route it will, it'll be taking. It totally depends upon the safety case analysis.

It, it would, uh, basically the manufacturers would be working with the civil aviation authorities to define the roots to... to see what will be the safer options to take. And the vehicle will be following the fixed, fixed route. In case of emergencies, the pilots can always, you know, take over and redirect those.

[00:13:16] Mizter Rad: So, wait, explain me something because you, when I met you, ...by the way, I met Akash in, Dubai in a conference called, GITEX. It's a, a huge tech conference that happens I believe every October. And he quickly explained me how it works, but it was super chaotic, with so many people.

So that's why I wanted to invite you to, to have this conversation. And one of the things that came to my mind is when you told me that you could actually drive these guys, these drones remotely, I found that fascinating. But you're saying now that you can also drive it in, within. Like you're inside of the, the aircraft.

No, you can't. Okay, so tell me more about how that works then. Who flies the drone?

[00:13:59] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Yeah, that's, that's what I meant. The, the pilot is always there on the ground. You know, he has the entire awareness of the ecosystem that he's flying in. Right? And by emergency, I mean, there's a camera, there's a con, constant monitoring, which is happen. And there are a lot of error checks that happens inside the vehicle. So when it comes to piloting these systems, it's more of monitoring rather than piloting. And in case of emergencies, the remote con, you can take over the remote control. That's what I meant by this. But uh, as you said, there are two kinds of system right now.

Few systems are manual with the pilot inside. Few, few of the manufacturers have that. Because, as you say, authorities will not allow autonomous, complete autonomous flights as of the moment. Thus it will be manual piloted. And then, second step would be autonomous flights.

[00:14:44] Mizter Rad: Okay, autonomous flights, meaning that these vehicles will fly by themselves using sensors and stuff like that, or how exactly that works?

[00:14:53] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): It's uh, e exactly. You like, suppose you have taxi operation going on from point A to point B. You can basically code the route and, and, and feed it into the system, and the vehicle will, will follow the designated route or it'll fly automatically on its own.

[00:15:08] Mizter Rad: And what if there are other vehicles? I mean, imagine 50 years from now you have thousand... a hundred thousand ve... I mean, imagine a city like Tokyo or Paris is, it's very dense. It's a lot of people around moving from A to B. And let's say they all wanna take a, an air flight from A to B. How do they communicate? I mean, how, how do you make sure... I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, you know, it's like one side of my head tells me, of course technology can do that. That's obvious. Nowadays, you know, this technology's so advanced that I can't imagine this is already possible with AI and predicting sort of ...

[00:15:43] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): exactly. So at the moment you do it in two ways, right? There's something called strategically by doing the perfect route planning and everything to avoid any obstacles on the way.

And then there is something called the tactical. Basically you have systems in installed, like collision avoidance systems. Tenant avoidance systems, which, which take care, and in case, your strategic mitigation fails. So you do it by technology and by planning before you start your operations.

[00:16:08] Mizter Rad: Okay. So you have like a, like... and those planning teams are part of a city right now, or are they privately sitting in the companies, in the manufacturers, um...

[00:16:22] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): no, those will be the operators. See how the normal aviation works?

Airbus is not a operator. Airbus is a manufacturer, but if you take Air France. Air France is an operator.

So that's a, that's the job of an operator to, to, to do that. So it'll be Air France who will be planning. Filing all the route, planning, all the route, you know, taking care of all the operations. It'll be a job of the operator, not the manufacturer.

[00:16:44] Mizter Rad: I see what you mean. But like, um, when I think about when I compare, if I compare it to planes that go from one country to the other, I completely agree with you.

But if I look at cars or taxis that are within the same territory, within the same jurisdiction, the planning of the routes of public buses, they're normally, as far as I understand, they're made by the city. So the public office... it's a team sitting that is part of the city. Is paid probably by the taxes that we all pay.

So, I know this is not, we're not there yet, but, how do you manage this?

[00:17:17] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): You take that example, if you take that example, in that case, your city is the operator. That's why they take care of, all the route planning, right? There is no private operator in this case. And if there is a private operator, he will work with the city authorities.

Hey, I'm going to start my own private bus service let's say. Your example. Yeah. And they say, I want to go on this route. And the city will say, okay, let me check, if it's feasible or not, if it's viable or not. And they say, okay, you can start your operation. Same way it'll happen in the drones as well, like, like an operator... it'll be operator's responsibility. In case the operator is the government or the city. It'll be city who would be doing that.

[00:17:51] Mizter Rad: And when, when you talk about safety, I think that's an important topic. What are the main possible fail points of a vehicle like this. At this point?

[00:18:00] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): At this point, the technology is still evolving.

I cannot highlight much in that to, to be honest. But, uh, it's still, uh, we are, we are still testing and like ... well, the technology is still evolving one-on-one, so ... if we talk about EHang , we haven't had any failures in 20,000, uh, 20,000 hours of flying. So it's at very nascent stage to highlight, okay, this is the problem, or that is the problem.

It'll take another few years to actually get to the crux, okay, this might be the problem, or this is what we need to solve again.

[00:18:28] Mizter Rad: Okay. I understand. How fast can it go? I guess it depends on the model, but let's say on average you can tell me, this model goes this fast. This model goes that fast. Is speed in general an important aspect for people you believe?

Are you as a manufacturer, are you worried about speed and about how fast can someone go to a from A to B or, is that a secondary thing at this point?

[00:18:53] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): You're doing very short distances, so speed is not a very major factor. Anyways, you are doing point A to point B. So more safety is the more important aspect than speed.

And generally, like for uh, 216 it can go around hundred kilometers per hour. And max speed can go up to 130. But you are going, as I said, you are going from point A to point B. The speed is not that much of a factor. Even if you go from a 100 to 200, you might be like saving one minute.

That's it. Inside the city. Because you still have to follow the procedures and stuff.

[00:19:24] Mizter Rad: I understand. And so what is the current status right now, Akash? When you look at the industry. You as an inside player, working on this on a daily basis. I understand that you work a lot with regulations as well.

[00:19:39] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Exactly.

[00:19:39] Mizter Rad: How advanced are we... for example, in this case, I believe you're more familiar with Europe...

[00:19:45] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): exactly. So I, I would say to be very honest. We are not far. We are not far. The operations would, would start very soon. It can, there are multiple, manufacturers in Europe. And, uh, it's not about like who's gonna do first. It's, it's, it's more about, there has to be someone first to break the market.

Right. And I would say we, we are not far. Another three to four years we can see some commercial operations already materializing in Europe.

[00:20:09] Mizter Rad: Do you think that it is a challenge for... or do you as a manufacturer worry about the challenge that I believe people might be scared of going into or flying into a, a drone like this, that is, because it's such a new technology. You're basically trusting either a guy that is flying you remotely, somewhere, but you cannot see, or you're trusting the system, the technology.

[00:20:34] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): It is a very interesting point of view, actually. Public acceptance is a very, very big factor in this. Which I have, I might have missed earlier. It's a huge factor actually to start commercial operations. And it's good that you, all the European authorities and the nationalization authorities are working towards it.

It's all about awareness, you see? So they like all the European projects that, uh, one of the European projects that I'm working on. It's more focused on awareness. The trials and demonstrations are open to public, to, to, so that they can see this technology is safe. And as, as you see, the public acceptance in past few years, especially in Europe, has gone a little little up.

It's a good thing, but it's a very important point. The public acceptance also needs to come, and as I, as I told you, the European authorities are working towards it to spread more and more awareness about it. So it, it's a challenge to solve, I would say.

[00:21:24] Mizter Rad: Do you work together with any operators? Are operator, I mean, operators, they're, I guess they're not operating commercially yet, but, um, are there any companies that are ready to jump in at this?

[00:21:33] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): There are, there are few of them. As you see, like, uh, national Police of Spain is using our vehicle to, to start the operations as soon as, uh, the regulations are in place.

[00:21:43] Mizter Rad: What are they using it for or what would they use it for?

[00:21:47] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): It'll be surveillance and inspections. Uh, you can go and check it out on YouTube, like EHang 216 with National Police of Spain. There are a lot of demonstration flights happening with them.

[00:21:56] Mizter Rad: So it would be to flying around the neighborhood and, and basically policing, making sure there's no crime happening, et cetera?

[00:22:04] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): No, it's more basically to, uh, reduce the response time. You see if, if you go by a road, It's, it's 10 minutes, but if there's some emergency happening, you can take this and you will be there in three to four minutes. It's more about that rather than policing.

[00:22:16] Mizter Rad: Okay. Okay. I see. I, when I was in Gitex, actually, I went to the stand of the Dubai Police and they also showed this video where they use a drone, but it was a smaller drone. It was not a, such a big drone where you can actually have someone inside. But, this drone would go on an emergency. Say it's a traffic accident. They, and the, with a camera, they would, um, and facial recognition, they would recognize who is involved in the accident. They would have a database of what kind of, you know, blood type, maybe that person that is involved in the accident has. Make sure that they carry with the drone some first emergency kit so that someone on ground can actually help.

[00:22:56] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Exactly.

[00:22:56] Mizter Rad: And their response time, like you said, is much faster. So this is something like this, more or less.

[00:23:02] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Exactly, exactly. It's more about the response time.

[00:23:05] Mizter Rad: I understand. When I talked about the challenge of maybe people accepting, or let's say fighting against that fear of flying a vehicle that is controlled by technology and that's it. I also see, or I also wonder if there is a benefit for a city. Let's say again, let's take the example of Tokyo or even Beijing, which is very polluted. In terms of pollution, when you compare a flying vehicle like, like the EHang vehicle, with a car... you can, you can talk about an, an, an electric vehicle as well.

How, how, how would you compare that? What is the kind of pollution that these vehicles emit?

[00:23:46] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): See there, it's electric, so there is no pollution at all. And it's more about not, not about pollution, what this vehicle will be used for. If you see by the, uh, mid half of the century, 70% of the population will be living in urban areas.

So there's a high need to decongest that city. So let's, let's take suppose your, let's take your example. If your office is somewhere near the city center, you would obviously want to live near the city center to reduce your commute time, right. What, uh, what it does is like the cities become more and more congested and there is no more space on the roads.

There is no more way you can build the roads. But what this urban, this, AUM will help is decongest that cities. Now you don't have to worry about because now you can live in the suburbs and take an AUV to, to your office and you are there in 10 minutes. So, this, this would be the more, more interesting aspect of using these vehicles.

And when you talk in terms of pollution, it's, it's electric. It's more about the source of electricity. It's not about the vehicle which is polluting.

[00:24:43] Mizter Rad: Right. Okay. Now that, that, that's another rabbit hole that we...

[00:24:47] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): exactly.

[00:24:47] Mizter Rad: We don't wanna go down because, we can spend hours and hours where this, where actually the electric energy comes from. That's another story. Exactly. And I believe of course, in, in the long run, it, it, I hope, my hope is that it, it, it, it gets cleaner and cleaner. Um when you talk about congestion. And you say, you know, if you right now take one hour from, look, I'm from Columbia originally and when I go back home and I believe for you, India is very similar or maybe even worse in terms of traffic.

You're in Bogota, a city of 8 million people. Some people live in the south, they work in the north. They take two hours. Two hours and a half to cross the city. And they have to do that because their, you know, their jobs need them to be there physically. So, I imagine, yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's a great idea. If you can, you can just fly and shorten your time and avoid traffic jams, that's great. But then as soon as a lot of people wanna do that, then you have a traffic jam on the air or not?

[00:25:50] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): No, it's not about that. It's more about planning. If you see, like, you will, you will be directly going out of your house and taking the vehicle and go directly landing on the office.

It's not gonna be that way. It's not gonna be that simple. It's going to be multimodal. But what, what, what do I mean by multimodal is, uh, You get out of your house. You basically walk for 10 minutes or, or take a bicycle for 10 minutes. You reach the nearest verti port. You take the vehicle, and you go near the city center.

You get down and five, 10 minutes you walk to your office or take a bus. So it's, it's going to be interconnections of all these technologies.

[00:26:21] Mizter Rad: All right. All right. So it's an addition to the current infrastructure. Infrastructure rather than a re replacing some sort of train or whatever.

[00:26:29] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Exactly. It'll, it'll work like that way. It's not gonna replace anything.

They, they're here to compliment these systems. And you, when, when you build something, you always compliment, you don't remove the existing systems. You, you integrate and you make it more better. You make it more efficient. You see?

[00:26:44] Mizter Rad: Yeah, I understand. Have you flown in any of these vehicles already, yourself?

[00:26:49] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Not inside, not yet. I need to visit China for that. Our headquarters. But here it'll be, it's, it's not allowed in Europe at all at the moment.

[00:26:58] Mizter Rad: It's not allowed at all. Okay. But you've flown them. You've controlled them remotely?

[00:27:03] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Yeah. Yeah.

[00:27:04] Mizter Rad: Or in a, in a test environment?

[00:27:06] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Exactly.

[00:27:07] Mizter Rad: And how does it look like? You're sitting in an office space with screens around you? I'm very curious about how this looks like also because there's a lot of people that listen to this afterwards. And I know a lot of people that listen to me are young, and so they're looking for maybe their next step in their career. Or trying to understand what to do with their lives. And so I find this topic super interesting because again, it reminds me of me looking at Cartoon Network and seeing and watching the Jetsons and, and wondering, wow, this is amazing. So for these people, these young people, these young folks that are looking for their next step in their career, I want you to maybe illustrate them. Tell them, a bit of how your environment, your work environment looks like when you fly this kind of vehicles.

[00:27:56] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): I would suggest to look at EHang Command and control Center if you Google it. Because there's a lot of confidential information involved there. But I would put it in a simple way. You can google it, EHang Command and control Center. So it can be as big as that, or it can be as small as, as a, as a laptop or a tablet,

[00:28:13] Mizter Rad: So it could be even on a phone?

[00:28:15] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Not, not phone, but a laptop or a tablet or it can be as big as EHang Command Control Center. You can Google it about it. Okay. So this is the information that I can give at the moment. Rest is all confidential. But I would say this is a very, if anybody's looking for a career and this, I would say this is the moment, this is the time.

We need a lot, a lot of people coming into this ecosystem. To make a, make a push for it. And it's going to be huge in the coming future. It's not something. It's here to stay. It's not something like, uh, fad, like a Bitcoin.

[00:28:42] Mizter Rad: Okay. That's another rabbit hole. But, um, how, how do you, how do you, for someone that is young, maybe just uh, getting out of high school, um, how do you get into this?

What do you have to study? What kind of skills? Because you say we're gonna need a lot of people. What kind of skills do need?

[00:28:58] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): The, the thing is right now, the industry at that very nascent stage. You can start off by just getting a simple drone pilot license, which is very easy. You need to have the basics of flying. Like aviation regulations. You need to be aware about how the operations happen, which are, which is very simple to learn.

So I would suggest to start off with the, you know, just a small drone pilot license. And get your hands on it and start flying few of these small systems. It's, it's very easy. It's, it's nothing to be scared of. When it comes to flying drones, I've seen a lot of people that it's kind of a mind blocker. Rather than, you know, it's people think, oh, it's a drone.

It's, uh, it's, it's, it's, I, I'm not very a good word to put it, but it's a kind of a mind blocker. Once you get past through it, then you start to understand the industry more and more. Then you see how the actual operations are happening. And you can start as simple as that. Like you can go online and look at the civil aviation, whichever country you are based in.

Go to your civil aviation website. Search for the own pilot license. And most of the licenses you can do it, finish it online by sitting in your home.

[00:29:58] Mizter Rad: Do you believe that?... now I wanna change a bit the topic because I realized that from a conversation I had before some weeks ago with a cybersecurity expert.

And she told me all about it and it was super interesting. Very, very nice conversation. If you guys wanna listen to it, it's on my Linktree. But yeah, I was thinking cybersecurity... getting hacked, one of these unmanned flying vehicles, that's also a, a threat.

No? Or what are you guys as a manufacturer working on?.

[00:30:30] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Exactly. It is, it is a challenge to be solved. And what a lot of manufacturers are working with is working with the network operators to have a dedicated bandwidth and a safe and secure bandwidth. So there are a lot of regulations in place how to design these communication system through EU regulations to make it more and more secure.

So basically if you look at EU regulations, you can say something called C2 Command link. And they have given this specification how to design it to, to prevent it from hacking. It is a challenge that aviation authorities and manufacturers both are so trying to solve it.

[00:31:01] Mizter Rad: C2 command link is called?

[00:31:03] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Command and Control Link. It's in the EU Regulation.

[00:31:07] Mizter Rad: When it comes to EU regulations, are the regulations put together with the manufacturers. Like manufacturers and regulators, politicians, sitting together and looking into this and, and defining the space basically?

[00:31:21] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Basically it's not just manufacturers, it's like everyone in the ecosystem. Once the regulations are made, the document is sent out for comments for everyone to comment on it, whether it's a operator, whether it's normal drone pilot or a manufacturer, to give the feedback on like how the regulations is.

And based on that, the aviation authorities take those comments into consideration and do the changes accordingly, which best suits the industry practices. That's how the EU regulations work.

[00:31:48] Mizter Rad: How do, these big traditional aviation companies react to a company like EHang? Do you guys work together in any way?

What's their take on this development of this branch of the industry?

[00:32:02] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Actually, in the beginning there was a lot of backlash from the traditional innovation authorities because, there were a lot of security issues involved. If you see at the Gatwick Airport, which had to be closed a lot of times, a couple of years back.

[00:32:15] Mizter Rad: Why was that?

[00:32:16] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): It's because drones were going up in the air and it's a big safety hazard.

[00:32:21] Mizter Rad: Well, I live in Germany. I think it's not so different here.

[00:32:24] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Exactly, exactly. Frankfurt had that same problem. CDG had the same problem. So there was a lot of backlash initially. And even what, what started happening, a lot of pilots started reporting about the drones. And in some cases the drones were not even there and they were false reporting it.

[00:32:39] Mizter Rad: The drones don't go, that they, they don't go that high up as the flights. So it was more like on the landing and taking off, I guess when they were a bit lower.

[00:32:48] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Exactly. Exactly. Because when they're coming in land for city, they, they, they had to descend. So that's why when the regulations have become more mature. And have become more harmonized, these aviation companies have realized that the potential of this, because now even they can offer their clients.

Suppose like Emirates, you can book a ticket directly to your Paris hotel. Like you get down off the Emirates aircraft, take a, take a eVTOL, and you are there at the hotel. So they, they are realizing it bit by bit. And it would be... It totally depends upon the integration, how the integration is gonna happen between the two systems .

That's the most important part. As I mentioned earlier, it's, it's the integration of UTM, basically unmanned traffic management and ATM air traffic management.

[00:33:28] Mizter Rad: So U T M is basically your branch and, ATM is the traditional one?

[00:33:34] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Exactly. Exactly. So the integration needs to happen to make it more safe and secure.

[00:33:38] Mizter Rad: What about the integration with the land, public transportation or actually private transportation companies, let's say Uber.

[00:33:46] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): They are, they are even, they're developing their own vehicles itself. And you see a lot of cities are already offering these services. Like if you take an example of Rio de Janeiro.

It's because city who has mastered urban air mobility. They have done it through helicopters, but in the future it can be replaced by eVTOLs. They are the, they are the one of the best in the world when it comes to implementing urban air mobility and perform the integration in these short distances.

[00:34:10] Mizter Rad: Why not using helicopters? Why do we need to switch to ...

[00:34:14] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): It's very, very costly. It's very maintenance heavy. And...

[00:34:18] Mizter Rad: the helicopter you mean?

[00:34:19] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Exactly. Mm-hmm. . It's not accessible to everyone. If the mass adoption needs to happen. If it's not accessible to everyone in the mass scale, it's not going to help with the problem of decongestion.

I like, for example, me, like I, I cannot pay for a helicopter every day to office. You see?

[00:34:35] Mizter Rad: And do you have an estimate? Do you guys and your team talk about maybe how, how cheap do you think it could go when it comes to a ticket, in the future?

You know, if I pay an Uber from A to B in Berlin, where I live, I pay, I would say within the city, maximum 20...20 euros, 25 euros.

Can you get that cheap?

[00:34:55] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Yeah. I will give you an example of CDG Airport, which the data is already online, on Google.

[00:35:00] Mizter Rad: CDG is Charles de Gaulle, right? Paris?

[00:35:02] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Exactly. Charles de Gaulle Paris Airport. It'll cost you going from CDG to the Paris City Center the same, but what you pay for Uber.

[00:35:09] Mizter Rad: Interesting.

And it will be faster?

[00:35:11] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because if you go from CDG to City Center, Paris, it's two hours with an Uber. It's a lot of congestion on the way.

[00:35:18] Mizter Rad: Can you have like a pool service? Like say not only two people, but maybe six people that take it together, but they don't necessarily know each other?

[00:35:27] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Depends upon the design of the vehicle, right? How many, how many you can accommodate.

[00:35:30] Mizter Rad: Right. What are the current designs?, how many can they accommodate?

[00:35:34] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): There are different, different designs available in the market from two seater to four seater, and there are some with six seaters as well.

[00:35:40] Mizter Rad: How high do they go actually?

[00:35:43] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): In the city, they will be flying it around 500 to 1000 meters.

[00:35:46] Mizter Rad: And then when they land and they take off, vertically, right?

[00:35:50] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Exactly.

[00:35:51] Mizter Rad: Like a, like a helicopter or is there a difference there?

[00:35:54] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): No, it's, it's like a helicopter vertical land and vertical takeoff.

[00:35:57] Mizter Rad: I guess the big difference is that the helicopter produces a lot of sound and, a lot of wind? And, this electric drone is much maybe silent and not so much wind or, in that case, what's the difference?

[00:36:10] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): At the moment. Noise is, is a concern, which needs to be solved, but it's not as high as a helicopter.

It's, it's still lower than a helicopter. But still the noise is a concern because you will be flying very low in the city and nobody wants flying all the time.

[00:36:23] Mizter Rad: Is it also a concern that people on the ground walking, you know, pedestrians and they look up, they look up in the sky in 50 years and they see just drones flying around and they think, oh, I could die anytime cuz one of these things could just fall in my head. Just playing Devil's advocate here ...

[00:36:42] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): It's never, that kind of traffic is never going to happen .

[00:36:45] Mizter Rad: I understand. I could believe some people might find that a bit frightening.

[00:36:51] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Yeah, exactly. Like there's a lot of concern with people, as you said. Like, people think that there will be drones everywhere, flying in the sky, like here and there, everywhere. No, it's not going to happen. There will be special corridors made and they will be flying to a special corridors, not, not like a free route everywhere.

Same like an aircraft operation, like you fly in a particular route, right? Just minimize it to, to a city level and you do the same thing.

[00:37:14] Mizter Rad: When it comes to, a very basic question, actually, but I was wondering, I love animals when it comes to birds. Um, how, because birds, I mean, they fly, I believe, on the same height as these drones or not?

Is that a concern as well? Or you don't touch much that topic?

[00:37:31] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Right now, that topic hasn't been touched much. I have to be very honest, whether from the, from the regulation perspective. But the thing is like, the, the noise made by the propeller, it, it's very unique.

It scares away the animals, so it's kind of a good thing as well.

[00:37:45] Mizter Rad: Okay. Okay. Okay. I.see.

[00:37:48] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Like, I'll give you an example. Like, in southern part of India. So they had a lot of, uh, problem with the elephants, because the, the, the rail route, the train route was going to the forest, and most of the time, like elephants used to come on the tracks and during the night they used to get hit by the trains, which was a bad thing.

So government tried a lot of things to do, to solve that, but they, they weren't able to solve it. Then they came to know that, uh, Elephants are afraid of bees and the small quad copers make the same noise as bees. So now near the tracks, what happened is, uh, they put, put the drones there and put the sensors.

So whenever the elephants try to come near the tracks, the drones will go up and the elephants would move away.

[00:38:30] Mizter Rad: Interesting. So now they make that sound on purpose. They put that sound there on purpose.

[00:38:34] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Exactly. To, to save the elephants.

[00:38:36] Mizter Rad: Yeah, I guess, I guess that that can be solved in multiple ways. Definitely. I don't see that as a big challenge, but I had that little concern as well.

Okay. So noise is a concern. Helicopters are expensive. Expensive to take, of course, as a, passenger. And these kinds of drones you say could compete with terrestrial traffic. Cars.

[00:38:59] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Exactly.

[00:39:00] Mizter Rad: Traditional cars.

[00:39:01] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): It's not to compete, it's more to compliment, you know, you can...

[00:39:04] Mizter Rad: No, I mean, I mean compete for users.

Because of course it can compliment the system. You know, nowadays, me as a user, as a city dweller, I have the option of taking my bike or renting a scooter. Or taking an Uber. Or taking a metro. Or taking a normal taxi. So I have five different options and this would be a sixth one.

So I'm, what I'm saying is that sixth one will have to compete with the other five, for example. Um, so it, it would have to have certain points of differences or, unique selling proposition.

[00:39:36] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): I can give you an example that you can, search it on Google. The project is commute project. It's, uh, Sopra Steria that my previous company, which I was working in, is a part of that project.

So what commute project is doing, suppose you want to take, uh, you want to come to Paris. So you go to the app, commute app, you enter your home address in Colombia. You enter your destination address, uh, in Paris, and it'll list all the options. Okay. From your home, go to nearest verti port, take the taxi near the airport.

Take a bicycle.

[00:40:05] Mizter Rad: Yeah.

[00:40:05] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Go to the airport, take this flight. From there, take another verti port near by your house. And from there you can either walk, you can take a bus, or to reach the destination. So that's the idea. From A to B.

[00:40:16] Mizter Rad: Exactly. So it aggregates basically all the different providers, and it gives the user the best way of moving from A to B.

That's, that's, that's for me, that's a, that's a win situation definitely for, for the end consumer. I don't see how that is bad. It's definitely, definitely a good thing.

[00:40:35] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Exactly. Exactly.

[00:40:36] Mizter Rad: I would like to tell everyone else that is listening it at this moment on Twitter, that if you have any questions or you want to participate, or you wanna, uh, maybe share a story related to flying cars... if you're part of the industry or not.

If you have any doubt you didn't understand something that Akash was saying, you can please raise your hand and I'll give you the mic.

Otherwise, Akash, I would like to know from your side, um, you already told us, or you gave advice to younger people of what they could study. What kind of route they can take to start their career in the aviation space. In this case, the drone, or let's say flying taxis as I call it.

But you call it unmanned aerial vehicles. That's the more technical term. So you already told us that.

Now I wanna know from your side, how do you see the future in this space?, how do you, if you would have to explain someone in very simple words, let's say your mother, your aunt, someone that is not very technical, and tell them: look, mom, aunt, grandmother, father, whatever. In 20, 30, 50 years, this is how the world will look like in terms of the aviation space.

What would you say?

[00:41:50] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): I would simply say if you are struggling right now to go to the market, don't worry. In 20 years you'll be flying to the market and you'll save a lot of time.

[00:41:58] Mizter Rad: To the market. You mean the supermarket.

[00:42:00] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Yeah.

[00:42:01] Mizter Rad: And so how far can you go with these things? Can you go from one city to the other? Will we get to the point where, um...

[00:42:08] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): ...the different platforms. Few platforms are designed for, uh, operations inside city, from point A to point B, and other platforms which are coming up to within 300 kilometer range from city one to city two.

And about 300 kilometer range. It doesn't make sense. People generally take, uh, aircraft, right? So, there are platforms coming up to go to nearby cities. Like if you look at EHang VD30, which has a range of 300 kilometers, which is designed to go from one city to another city. 216 is designed to be inside city. From A to B.

[00:42:39] Mizter Rad: So basically this will make traveling cheaper in your opinion.

[00:42:42] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Exactly it will. And much faster, much eco-friendly.

[00:42:46] Mizter Rad: Okay. Interesting. Interesting. All right. If no one else has a question, I would love to wrap up. I'm very happy and grateful Akash that I could join or you could join us in this conversation. I learn a lot from you and that's great.

I hope to see you soon, maybe in Dubai or maybe on the air.

[00:43:06] Akash Mishra (flying cars pilot): Maybe when you, if you're coming to France, let me know. You can visit me in Lyon.

[00:43:10] Mizter Rad: Absolutely. I will. Thank you so much Akash for your time. For your, for sharing your expertise. See you next time.

And thank you everyone for being here.

It was a pleasure to host this space and see you next time. Have a beautiful evening, morning, or day, wherever you are. Chao Chao. Bye-bye.