Electric Vehicles

While I can see some legitimate uses - such as the one mentioned - in general it's not something I'd like to see my country emulate. Far from everybody that currently do should be operating a vehicle in two dimensions, let alone three. A road accident is bad enough, but plowing straight down into someone's living room is worse.

I work on this stuff. Pretty interesting situation with Chinese competition.

Western culture has both normalized a safety first culture and sensationalized all flying accidents. FAA was built to uphold these things. The barriers to entry are so high, that effectively zero new companies or innovative products were successful for 50 years. Today tech companies are leaning in to lead the new markets, but it takes billions to get through the barriers, and most find it better to launch in less regulated markets. Zipline from CA, for example, has been flying medical drone delivery in Africa for many years.

Chinese leadership decide what priorities are, and are willing to tolerate some failure and loss. They bring products to market quicker internally, the products are less mature. This gives them the opportunity to iterate in the field, which is a competitive advantage. But with lower barriers to entry may come inferior products, and time will tell whether those orgs iterate to succeed faster than Western companies aiming for high initial capabilities, or if the Western companies have enough war chests to carry them to market with superior products or if they burn up trying.

At the moment, my career hinges on the Western approach, but I very much appreciate every step to minimize barriers.

And don't worry so much, honestly. These things will be comparatively safe before they drop off your order or pick up your kids, no riskier than the ride in today. Unless you are an early adopter is a less regulated market, then keep your head up.