Uber air taxi designs: six eVTOL vehicles that could take you on your first trip
- Boeing, Embraer and Bell are among several companies that are building air transport vehicles that Uber could adopt for its air taxi service
- Uber says it will conduct flight demonstrations for Uber Air in 2020 and that its aerial ride-sharing service will be commercially available in 2023
Is it a car? Is it a plane? It’s hard not to get excited about Uber’s air taxi, its vision of the future for commuters and travellers.
Last week at the third Uber Elevate Summit 2019 in Washington, the San Francisco-based ride-hailing app that has revolutionised short hops on the ground took part in some blue-sky thinking by unveiling its first air taxi cabin design. The future service, already given the name Uber Air, centres on an electric vehicle called North Star that has a cabin seating four passengers.
Uber revealed earlier this month that its Uber Copter service in New York would allow users to book journeys by helicopter flight.
The company says it will conduct flight demonstrations for Uber Air in 2020 and that its aerial ride-sharing service will be commercially available in 2023. The first Uber Air cities will be Frisco in Texas and Los Angeles in California.
Created in collaboration with the California-based aircraft interiors company Safran Cabin, North Star is one of many concepts of how an air taxi could look.