So as I am preparing to go travelling, one of the cities which I would love to visit is Dubai. Over the years Dubai has transformed into a city of excess and extravagance. They have the biggest buildings, beautiful man-made beaches, unbelievable 7 star underwater hotels and now they want to be the first city with flying taxis.
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The plan is obviously very ambitious and the flying taxi itself is a German developed Volocopter which is a small 2 seater drone-like helicopter run on batteries capable of a 30 minute flight duration.
As with the space race in the 60's Dubai is in a race with European and American firms such as aerospace juggernaut Airbus, Google co-founder backed company Kitty Hawk and Uber all with their own science fiction-inspired vision for creating a new form of urban transport that is a cross between a driverless electric car and a short-haul, vertical takeoff-and-landing aircraft.
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The Cora Air Taxi by Kitty Hawk
The Cora air taxi at first glance looks more like a conventional airplane however its actually a hybrid of both an airplane and a helicopter. Its is capable of rising like a helicopter and flying like a plane, therefore it does not require a runway to take off from. Cora also has self flying capabilities with human oversight as a safety measure its also has a flying range of 100 kilometres and a top speed of 177kph.
Aurora Flight Sciences, which Boeing now owns, is working on a flying taxi project with Uber
Up till now now Uber has been a successful taxi company without owning any taxis, so with this projecting they will be developing their own taxis for the first time...flying taxis!
Able to seat 2-5 people inside what are essentially a giant drone Uber is looking to commercialize these flying taxis to be used widely over the course of the next 5 to 10 years. All this talk of flying taxis flying above our heads sounds dangerous so Uber has partnered with NASA to develop an air traffic management system that will keep those passengers safe.
I am really excited to see what the future holds for these flying air taxis I just hope that they are safe and affordable for the average person like myself!
Uber recently had a fatal incident with one of their self driving cars killing a pedestrian in Arizona. The vehicle was in autonomous mode when it hit a woman who was walking outside of the crosswalk when she was hit and later died at a hospital. So as exciting as all of these projects sound safety must always be at the upmost importance especially with flying cars, we don't want to see them dropping from the skies!