There are many series and films that have fictitiously recreated this situation. And no, for now there will be no personal flying cars, but flying taxis may arrive sooner than many expect.
Over the last few weeks news about Uber and its Uber Elevate project have overwhelmed the media talking about flying taxis and the future of urban mobility. What the company proposes in the long term is an extensive network of autonomous electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles (E-VTOL) that would move between “Skyports” with charging points at high speeds. Uber saythey want to offer an affordable service, comparable by price to an UberX. The estimations on prices are € 5.07 per passenger mile, although they hope to reduce it to € 1.65.
But they are not alone, some start-ups and other companies such as the Airbus group are already developing their own Urban Air Mobility (UAM) projects. The Airbus group already has some experience in this area, since in collaboration with Cabify launched Voom, a company that allows to rent private helicopters through its app in advance of around an hour.
Airbus has two development projects for E-VTOL, Vahana and CiityAirbus. The German Start-up Lilium is also developing this type of vehicle. Both companies, as well as Uber, are in trial periods of their prototypes.
Uber plans to start the Uber Elevate tests in Dallas, Los Angeles and Melburne in 2020 and launch the service in 2023, as planned by Airbus, but Liliun does not plan to enter the market in 2025.
NASA has taken action on the matter and is currently collaborating with Uber to develop the software of their E-VTOL, in addition to simulating different scenarios to prove how safe this system would be. In addition to conducting various market studies of the hand of other firms.
The Urban Air Mobility by electric vehicles could revolutionize traffic in large cities as we know it, but, is it a reality within the deadlines set by the aforementioned companies? This sector has many barriers, and these will be higher or lower depending on the country in which they intend to develop, since one of the problems that these proposals must face will be the regulation of each area in terms of air traffic, in addition to very high social barriers in terms of security, privacy, disappearance of work in transport sector, environment and audiovisual impact in cities.