>>1874079the more redundancy you add to something, the less it's able to perform (more empty weight, less range, worse efficiency). That's the reason three and 4 engine planes are on the way out for two engine planes.
>>1873880drones replaced helicopters in roles that you don't actually have to carry people, they save money by not having to be as big and not having to follow the same safety certification standards.
>>1873792High performance electric motors are not maintained at all, they are replaced because they are built to much higher tolerances and in terms of durability they are surprisingly not that far off compared to jet engines. While they are much cheaper than equivalent piston/jet engines and have no issues with ingesting foreign objects, the bigger issues with helicopter reliability has to do with their gearboxes, and human sized e-vtols need a gearbox for every blade to keep tip speed below the speed of sound as electric engines need to rotate really fast to be lightweight.
As for multiple vs single rotor, i'll just point out that for the same physical size a single rotor will have less disk loading and thus higher efficiency than a multiple rotor system, and that quadcopters are quite loud for their size and weight - their noise is comparable equivalently sized rc helicopters. Multiple rotors do have the advantage of not needing a tail rotor (the real weak point of a regular helicopter) or blade pitch controls.
Fly by wire is not something exclusive to e-vtols and can be applied to regular helicopters, but honestly it doesn't help all that much - the real goal is making the helicopters fly themselves to the destination. And the idea that e-vtols are as efficient as a regular car, let alone an electric car, is utterly bullshit unless you are comparing a single person in a 6 seat car vs an e-vtol at max capacity.
