Sky high: will flying taxis soon be filling the firmament?

From the Monday morning rush hour to the office exodus on Friday afternoon, our inner cities are clogged with traffic. What is the alternative? To set off earlier or later than everyone else. To use public transit. Or to take to the skies.

Uber Air, Volocopter and Lilium – they all have a common goal: to transport people to their destinations faster, to leapfrog the tailbacks, and to protect the environment to boot. And how do they intend achieving their lofty aims? Very simply, with flying taxis: compact, electric, and with vertical takeoff. That is how they envisage the future of the daily commute. 

A flight of fancy?

Uber Air , for instance, hopes to be offering commuters and tourists an affordable shared flight as early as 2023. It should be safe, quiet and sustainable. To this end, the company is working hand-in-glove with cities, investors and political decision-makers. The plan is for the flying taxi to take just under 15 minutes for some 70 kilometers. Compare that to a train, which would take over two hours, or UberX, which would need about 100 minutes.

German companies, too, are looking into the airborne option. For instance Volocopter, a German start-up, has already notched up significant successes with a manned test flight with the world’s first autonomous flying taxi in Singapore. And these vehicles are “not something for the far-off future,” states Florian Reuter, Managing Director of Volocopter, in an interview with Spiegel* magazine: commercial operations are slated to begin in 2021. The Munich-based start-up Lilium was able to conclude a similar pilot phase in late October. Unmanned and remote-controlled, the five-seater Lilium Jet reached speeds of up to 100 km/h, as reported by manager magazine*.

*German only

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