- Edited
Is it for REAL?
McFly.aero is a REALLY risky project. And we also have a lot of problems to solve before affordable city flights are available with a click. BUT we are open – you can reach us by Skype, Telegram, email, personal meeting. We can talk about our previous startups, introduce you to engineers who support McFly... So if you call a scam anything riskier than a main street coffeeshop, then yes, we are definitely not a ninth street coffeeshop. But as we understand the word ‘scam’, it's for those who want to get away with money not ever planning to build anything, and it's definitely not what we are. Yes, we are really scared with the immensity of our ideas, but we are sure that together with you these plans have no other way than to be implemented.
Do you have prototypes?
We are not manufacturers of eVTOLs, however 4 companies already have prototypes. Here are some links:
Volocopter — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qArZGwtRINg
Lilium — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohig71bwRUE
Passenger Drone — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3pi4HfQ0Gc
Ehang 184 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8shiw6zY_A
If you are talking about infrastructure, we are on the WIP right now to create the first version of the protocol for those who support us.
Who are your partners now?
Two eVTOL manufacturers (Bartini, Hepard, validated by the Russian national innovation tax-exempt tech hub, 20+ passenger jet designers and test-flight engineers), one component manufacturer (FARAD ultracapacitors), two IoT-focused Blockchains (Universa, Emercoin), one drone blockchain app developer (AIRA, machine-to-machine smart contracts), in talks with Dubai and Moscow regional govt. CreativeRussia designers community.
When I can get it in my city?
The project includes VTOLs production, blockchain system design, infrastructure development, participation of manufacturers, entrepreneurs, evangelists, community members and enthusiasts. If the Community Chapter in your city is strong, you'll get the system in your city the soonest. It is very real that by the end of 2018 the blockchain will be tested, that during 2019 most of the basic contracts for production and supplies are made, and it is viable for the Manufacturers to start supplies by 2020. From this time, it's upon your city McFly Community chapter's efforts to have the sufficient number of supporters and enthusiasts to have flying cars with and app to call them.
When the first flight will happen?
We expect the first test flight be made in the first half of 2018, and the first commercial flights for tokens by 2020
Who are the pilots? Do eVTOL needs a pilot?
At first we expect that eVTOLs will be piloted by professional pilots. It is not because such piloting is expected to be difficult – compared to helicopter, it will require no skills at all – but at first, to play it safe, authorities will inevitably request qualified pilots to be there. Then, we have all the reasons to expect that there will be some easy training, 3-6 practice hours at most, to obtain authorization for piloting an eVTOL. And in some years, eVTOLs will become fully auto-piloted, and therefore no certification will be required at all.
What about laws? Do you have agreements with cities?
Depends which city we are talking about. Some cities have already permitted intra-city small aviation flights - like Dubai did earlier this year. Some cities are in the process of development of flight rules. We realise this requires time, but as soon as any city starts to use aero taxi, others will strive to catch up.
I am an engineer. How can I join you?
Welcome to McFly Community! Please introduce yourself in this post — http://forum.mcfly.aero/t/introductions
Fill in the form in Get Token section of McFly website, leave your email and in the 'Area of Expertise' field indicate your wish to join the engineering team. Then, just in case our response is not there during a couple of days, ping us in our Telegram group or wherever we are represented in social media with a loud yelp, we are bound to get in touch with you.
Can I buy something now? A charger or eVTOL?
A McFly token is a function. Applicable to eVTOL it's a minute of flight, applicable to a charger it will be some other measure of the charger's life cycle. If you obtain a number of tokens large enough to cover the whole life cycle of one eVTOL (this is 700 000 McFly), you'll efficiently own an eVTOL. As soon as it's produced, you'll be able to lock a lifecycle of one ready eVTOL for yourself.
How you are going to spend the money?
We can refer you to our pie charts showing the way we are going to dispose the funds entrusted for the common cause by the Community.
Do you think 30% of the collected funds can really be enough to launch a VTOL into production? Or, can it be too large an amount to spend on the VTOLs design?
We are now cooperating with two eVTOL designers — Bartini and Hepard. Other VTOL’s manufacturers are welcome, but all these issues are yet to be resolved and decided depending on the success we have. One Bartini may not need huge amounts; Hepard is almost complete by now; but others may require funds as well. The more VTOLs manufacturers get supported by Blockchai.aero Consortium’s efforts and funds, the more various VTOLs are in the system, the better is our chance to fly in flying cars in the cities we live. As for the amounts required for a VTOL design and production, we can actually look into the relevant experience of our fellows in the market. The figures are open, there’s no secret: Volocopter spent about 9 mln USD, E-Hang spent 14 mln to come up with a flying model, AeroMobile spent 16 mln. Terrafugia used about 12 mln USD, Kitty Hawk – a cool thing, featuring a metal net with a saddle and motors – had 70 mln at their disposal to design, build and launch the production, LiliumJet had 14,5 mln to build up. However possibly it’s the investments, not the real expenditures figure.
For us to indicate some figure, other than the percentage, to be spent to VTOL’s research, would be irresponsible. Among us, we discussed our plans, calculated the required expenditures, built various models based on pessimistic, realistic and optimistic expectations and eventually came up with the apportionment of funds gathered by the community as you can see it in our pie charts.
Why does one flying car cost 700 000 McFly?
700 000 is an aircraft lifespan, a technical resource of a flying car corresponding to 700 000 minutes spent in flight. It’s somewhat similar to when you buy a mercedes or a renault, whose lifespan is, roughly, 300 000 kilometers.
Do you think one McFly will really be enough for one minute of flight?
Fundamentally, when you are off the grid, outside the network, then there’s only 1 McFly for the minute of flight, but in the network you’ll have to pay a bit more because before the flight, during it, and after it the eVTOL is going to use of all the relevant network elements, pay for them in McFly and add these to your final price.
Will the passengers be able to pay for the flight not with McFly only, but also with other coins or tokens?
We may suppose that someday some other decentralised player may wish to release an app for converting any tokens to McFly at best rates etc., but we believe that if there is a complex function tokenized and existing in sophisticated economics of IoT, then every stakeholder and contributor, every asset engaged in the infrastructure, should be receiving its remuneration in McFly. The eVTOL receives its remuneration in McFly, as soon as it has collected 700 000 McFly, it leaves for the factory to be disposed of and replaced. An insurer receives McFly for insurance, if the eVTOL is broken, or any accident occurred, it pays the insured amount in McFly. So everything related to flights is calculated in McFly. When we fly in the network, we pay as for the flight, as for the infrastructure elements we used during the flight.
Will you put any limit on McFly tokens emission?
McFly tokens emission will depend on the number of eVTOLs released and delivered to cities. Every time a new car is produced, 700 000 McFly will be issued by the fabric. This way, the McFly token emission is limited by the number of VTOLs produced.
What is McFly/USD rate now? What are your expectations towards the future price?
The rates are changing every minute and will be changing anyway with the fluctuation of Ethereum, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, so there is no sense in putting a rigid USD rate.
By the moment, as you may see, we have tokenized lifespan of 3000 Bartinis. With the current McFly rate, one car, if re-calculated in, say, dollars, costs between 20 000 – 40 000 USD depending which day of the pre-TGE we take. This is a very small price, and it is made only for those early birds who believe in us and what we do. It’s for those who share our vision of deployment a huge decentralized network of shared flights in future, who’ll risk with us and join this adventure.
We’ve got a chart where we ponder at, really, how much can one McFly cost in a year, in a couple of years, in five and ten years’ time. The easiest starting point is Uber who have already said, that initially an air taxi will cost like Uber Black, as announced in their White Paper - so, technically, we are talking about 8 USD per minute. If we take a charter by helicopter which costs about 2-3 thousand USD per hour, we can easily come up with a minute of flight at 50 dollars. If we imagine a situation in future that, for instance, there’s Uber in Madrid as a flight provider, and there’s Blockchain.aero for that in Barcelona with the relevant passenger network everywhere - then we may presume that a minute of flight in these systems will approximately be the same, especially if the both systems work side-by-side – then, possibly, McFly will cost something about that established rate.
Well, it is indicated in our White Paper and in the relevant sections of the websites, that, paradoxically, the Community's and the Consortium's goal is to do our work in such a way that McFly tokens fall in price. That is, if all of us do our work correctly, the price of McFly tokens will start to go down from some point in future, with the growing number of flying cars around, of cities to join the network, etc.
If we think about our closest future, and consider how everything goes on, we’ll see that with Uber and everybody, such systems will be deployed and will start massively in two-three years. In a year or two Dubai will launch, in some three years Dallas and Abu-Dhabi, China will jump into, won’t miss it. And this will be the time when a mass system will state the cost of a minute of flight. From that time, we’ll know our own minute of flight as it is - not that of the helicopter, not of the private jet, but our real market price. And then Bartini will start flying with others. In some cities there will be only Bartini on Blockchain.aero, in others, maybe, Bartini or Volocopter on Uber only, in some cities the systems will live side-by-side, in some cities there will be Uber on Blockchain.aero. Then, when the systems will only start to emerge all over, the cost of flight will be the highest.
Uber supposes that during the first years of operation the charge will match Uber Black, and then it will be gradually decreasing to level with Uber X. One of the factors for this decrease is thought to be the transition to auto-piloted vehicles, when at first vehicles will be professionally piloted, then light-qualified piloted, and then the full automation will take the place. Fully automated VTOLs will make the cost of flight so low, that the cost of vehicle itself won’t matter anymore.
So at first there will be the highest cost of flight, with the Demand and Supply ratio shifted to the D side. But then, in 15 years’ perspective, the cost of one minute of flight will have to become futile, hardly noticeable at all. When pilots go away, when centralised giants fade replaced by decentralised shared networks, the cost of one minute of flight will be similar to the present day cost of Internet or mobile phone connection - when we pay these costs not really noticing them. The IoT will deliver the function of flight to everybody, and our task here is to make McFly cost as cheap as possible to help to bring this vision to the reality.
Of course, if we look at the start of this story and consider the current cost-per-minute (that is, if you want a flight from LA to San-Francisco to watch Traviata), then the growth potential at the moment is hundreds - no, thousands, minimum - in the nearest two or three years. Just apply this logic, extrapolate and calculate. This is how it has all the chances to be from now.
But thereafter, in longer perspective, the price of McFly will, and have to, become significantly cheaper.
Will you tell your community when the price goes down?
The matter is, we of course do not know what the market price will be in reality and what will be the exact way in which the price graphs will be developing. It is true, our task is to make McFly as cheap and affordable as can be. But guess what – we cannot really tell in what units we’ll measure cost of goods, services and functions in 15 years. Will it still be dollars? Will there be euro in the world? Will we continue using bitcoins?
We do not really know in what units we’ll measure the cost of things in future. If we try to make a very possible supposition that in 15 years we’ll find ourselves in a world where fiat currency ceased to serve as a means to measure everything, and cryptocurrencies have tokenized everything, and we became able to measure cost of things directly – like, the cost of flight to the cost of cup of coffee, McFly to a Coffeecoin – then what could be our expectation to this kind of rate?
Now, for instance, Uber told that it would charge 4 cups of coffee. I wonder if we can at all guess if it’s cheap or expensive in terms of future. What if coffee becomes scarce in the world because of deteriorating ecology, and is affordable only for moneybags? But the thing is, McFly is bound to become cheaper in the long term, whether related to fiat money or to direct IoT tokens rates, as the task is to fly freely, to have the flight as accessible as water supply.
Anyway, this price reduction will not be abrupt, but this trend will be happening gradually, during several years after the system blossom, in dynamics with thousand of cities and thousand of cars in them involved.
Who is the head of Blockchain.aero Consortium?
A funny question. Who can be a head of a decentralized system? Who is a head of Bitcoin? We are building a whole community to support and develop the idea. At the moment there are several people who make the core of the emerging community, you can see them on Blockchain.aero website, but the community is constantly growing. It is our goal that someday we won’t be able even to tell how many people there are in the community core.
What is the minimum level of contribution?
It is 0,01 ETH in Token Launch Phase 1.1 and it would be 0,02 ETH in Token Launch Phase 1.2
When I will be able to buy tokens?
TLP 1.1 starts on November 7th and ends on 19th, starting day of TLP 1.2 will be announced later
How many tokens will you create and why?
It is defined by the number of cars, for example in TLP 1.1 we are going to sell generate 1.8 billion tokens, which is equivalent to lifecycle of 1500 two-seater and 1500 four-seater Bartini flying cars
How to use my token wallet?
You will be able to use it starting from December 25th
Why do you use blockchain?
The reason of Bartini’s need for blockchain is, at the very least, similar to that of the car manufacturers’ who work to implement blockchain to odometer records for cheat prevention. If your ledger records, along with the distance covered according to your car’s wheels creep, also include GPS location change, fuelling at gas stations, pick up and deliver points, then you are protected from the fraudulent attempts to change the data. In Bartini’s case, the factor to confirm that the flight was actually performed combines several evidences: that the engines operated for a definite time, that the battery got discharged, the VTOL’s GPS location was changed from point A to point B, that the VTOL carried this number of passengers (or maybe, it carried some unmanned cargo, which can be the case as well), and their transfer was paid (signed) with the definite wallets’ identificators, etc. All these signatures combined identify the fact that the flight was performed.