As I’ve said before, every time I read a story about flying taxis, I learn something new.
Flying taxis have made enough regulatory inroads with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to result in the recent creation of a new aircraft category called “powered lift,” a step that the agency hadn’t taken since helicopters were introduced for civilian use in the 1940s.
But there are more regulatory hurdles to be cleared before air taxis will be allowed to carry passengers in the U.S., making Dubai the most likely place where eVTOLs will take commercial flight — perhaps by the end of this year.
“It’s a tricky business to develop a whole new class of vehicles,” said Alan Lim, director of Alton Aviation Consultancy, a firm tracking the industry’s evolution. “It is going to be like a crawl, walk, run situation. Right now, I think we are still crawling. We are not going to have the Jetsons-type reality where everyone will be flying around everywhere in the next two to three years.”
China is also vying to make flying cars a reality, a quest that has piqued President-elect Donald Trump’s interest in making the vehicles a priority for his incoming administration during the next four years.
If the ambitions of eVTOL pioneers are realized in the U.S., people will be able to hop in an air taxi to get to and from airports serving New York and Los Angeles within the next few years.
Because its electric taxis can fly unimpeded at high speeds, Joby envisions transporting up to four Delta Air Lines passengers at a time from New York area airports to Manhattan in about 10 minutes or less. To start, air taxi prices almost certainly will be significantly more that the cost of taking a cab or Uber ride from JFK airport to Manhattan, but the difference could narrow over time because eVTOLs should be able to transport a higher volume of passengers than ground vehicles stuck in traffic going each way.
“You will see highways in the sky,” Archer Aviation CEO Adam Goldstein predicted during an interview at the company’s San Jose, California, headquarters. “There will be hundreds, maybe thousands of these aircraft flying in these individual cities and it will truly change the way cities are being built.”
First, I once again get to enhance my vocabulary, thanks to the term “powered lift”. It’s a little crazy to think that there hasn’t been a new, formally recognized category of flying machines in almost 80 years, but here we are.
In our last update on flying taxis, it was suggested that FAA approval would not come before 2027, which as noted scotches the “flying taxis at the FIFA World Cup” possibility. I still feel like there will be some way to make it happen in time, but I’m just guessing as someone with zero expertise in the matter. Also, whether that would be a good idea is another thing.
The price of these trips remains a subject of some uncertainty. I won’t rehash what I’ve said before, just that there’s going to need to be some more infrastructure to make this all make sense, and the price of the ride will necessarily need to include the price of getting to the ride.
The comment about “highways in the skies” brings up again the question of noise, and also of safety. Commercial air travel is extremely safe in the US, way more so than driving land-based vehicles, but these things are brand new and we’ll be figuring it out as we go. Not to put too fine a point on it, but any mishaps in the air will have the potential to cause a whole lot more damage than a typical wreck on the highway.
And finally, the China factor and Things Donald Trump Fixates On. I’ve already noted that for good or for ill, Trump 2.0 will mean a smoother path to approval and adoption for autonomous vehicles, and I think the same will be true for flying taxis. Whatever happens in the short term, I expect there to be a lot of movement on this in the next four years.