EJ222
Hot swappable batteries, maybe?

But yeah, where to land the thing is a a huge elephant in the room. Hot destinations tend to not have room for anything bigger than a helicopter.
Gizmowiz
Love the idea of sky buses. If you have a 40 person sky bus hauling people around a city were not far off from visions of cities like in the 5th Element.
Towerman
@EJ
The solution is simple, build basic elevated landing pods between routes and destinations.
sidmehta
If this works, airlines could run from city centers instead of huge airports 1-2 hours away from downtown.
Jean Fongang
The ducted fans seem to float in Air. How real is their design?
paul314
Your city has to be really congested with no dedicated bus routes for something like this to make sense as a crosstown mover, even if you're talking 100km crosstown. Capital and operating costs are going to put it in the double or triple digits per ride.

Where it might be useful is in transport to offshore or rugged locations, where today you need to choose between helicopters (low capacity) or buses/ferries (slow and not always sufficient for access).
BlueOak
Couldn’t imagine why any sane existing company would tread into “30-50” person VTOL electric vehicles when there aren’t even any 1-2 person examples in production!?!

“part of the UK's Future Flight Challenge, which is using some £125 million (US$171 million) of government cash”

Answer, Government money. Funding where spending doesn’t have to stand the test of hard metrics, to say nothing of commonsense.
Nelson Hyde Chick
Even being electric these things will be loud, and they will only benefit the wealthy while making the urban environment unbearably noisy for everyone else.
Arcticshade
@Nelson Hyde Chick
Motorbikes are loud, trucks are loud, supercars, superbikes, helicopters are crazy loud, YET they have been on the road (and heli's in the air) since forever, wake up and face the reality that will soon stare you right in the face as the skies will be filled with EVTOL's sooner rather than later !
Arcticshade
@Paul
Not at all whatsoever, once the infrastructure is in place it will cost no more than a bus ticket per person with government subsidies. Commute times will decrease and roads will be more quiet a win win !