Uber Flying Cars

Über presents its latest "flying car" prototypes for the air taxiservice.

About presents its latest "flying car" design at its second yearly Elevate Convention in Los Angeles. Until 2023, the airplane with which the enterprise wants to take off as an air taxicab is a mash-up of an airplane and a heliport. The planes are electric and Uber says they will be flying at an altitude of 1,000 to 2,000 ft.

It plans to operate several thousand flying cabs that will carry travellers between the "skyports" on the roof and the urban airfields, each of which will be capable of 200 take-offs and landings per hours. At first, the airplane is flown by people, but later it will be flown independently. Uber's not gonna build exactly this plane, just to be sure.

Uber's production partner Bell Helicopters, Embraer and Pipistrel will use the prototypes as a basis for their own flying taxis. It will be an eye-catcher for the company's two-day elevator meeting, attended by aerospace, property, infrastructure officials and governments.

In this year also Uber-CEO Dara Khosrowshahi will appear. Über presented his plans to get the lift into the air in 2016, but the projekt still faces considerable obstacles. However, the type of plane Uber envisages carrying people from the roof to the roof - electrically, autonomously, with the capability to take off and landing vertical (also known as DVTOL, distinctive ee-vee-tol) - does not yet really exists, nor does the supporting structure for such a vessel.

Expert opinion is that technical and regulative obstacles can help stop flying cars from ever taking off sensibly. This does not mean that flying cars do not have a moment: at least 19 enterprises are working on flying cars. This includes heritage vendors like Boeing and Airbus as well as small start-ups like Kitty Hawk, which belong to Google creator Larry Page.

Meanwhile, Uber has made significant progress working with a fistful of airframe builders, property developers and regulatory agencies to improve its ability to develop a fully operational, on-demand airport taxiway services. Über has entered into a Space Act Agreement with NASA to provide a completely new ATC system to pilot these low-flying, potentially stand-alone planes.