Otherwise as you said, it WILL be regulated to death.
It's already regulated to death.
You have 2 sides regulating it, the FAA and Local Government.
This is simplified. "VTOL" is vertical take off and landing, I'm going to use that instead of "oversized quadcopter".
The FAA has 2 classes of aircraft: Ultralight and Real
Ultralight aircraft are severely restricted as to where they can fly, they can't go into busy airspace, daylight only, can't operate over "congested" areas, so no operating over cities or many suburbs. The one advantage is they have no pilot certification requirements, you could just buy one and fly it. Some of the single person VTOLs will likely be flown that way.
Real aircraft have more stringent requirements but they can be flown over cities and in busy airspace, at night, and in some cases into clouds. But then you have to be a pilot, which even if streamlined will still likely to be in the tens of thousands of dollars.
Interestingly, the FAA doesn't much care about where you take off or land your private aircraft as long as you do it safely. Commercial operators have more restrictions. The only things on the ground they certify are airports.
For what "busy airspace" means, here's Salt Lake City. The red line(really the blue line it follows) is where you're not flying your ultralight and where "real aircraft" have to be in continuous communication with Air Traffic Control. Areas outside that have other rules and may or may not restrict ultralights.
So, you're outside busy airspace, don't want to fly at night, don't mind the restrictions for your ultralight, the FAA doesn't care where you take-off and land as long as you're safe, you're good, right?
But wait, there's more.
Now we have local government, who does control the ground.
Let's look at SLC again:
16.16.070: LANDING FIELD ESTABLISHMENT CONDITIONS:
It is unlawful for any person to set up or to maintain within the limits of the city any landing field for aircraft without special permission first obtained from the mayor in writing. (Prior code § 2-3-17)
So, without a permit you're likely to have problems if you expect to pull out on the street and take-off. Sure you could get your vertiport(VTOL airport) certified, but then you're likely going to have NIMBYs and the city government to contend with.
I expect the single passenger ultralight VTOLs like the Jetson ONE to be the realm of the people with too much money who might want to fly from their house in Malibu,CA to their house in the Malibu hills.
Multi-passenger ones which are certified are likely to be used as air-taxis, probably initially with "real" pilots by companies that can deal with all the FAA and local government regulations. Things like the Joby S4.
