Boeing Finally Puts Its Flying Car In The Air One Year After Some Of Its Rivals

A Boeing flying taxi intended to take commuters over clogged city roads and evade high rises finished its first experimental drill on Tuesday, offering a look into the eventual fate of urban transportation the aviation monster and others are trying to shape.

A model of its autonomous flying car finished a controlled departure, drift and arriving amid the test led in Manassas, Virginia, the creator of military and business planes said in an announcement on Twitter.

Like many other flying car models, the Boeing flying car is powered by electricity and fly up to 80km at a stretch.

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Boeing NeXt which is Boeing’s urban air mobility division, enrolled Aurora to plan and build up the model. While Boeing didn’t state if the model is the one being produced for Uber, the ride-hailing company said independently Wednesday that the vehicle is on track to be an air taxi on the arranged Uber Air. Dallas-Fort Worth and Los Angeles will be the first American cities in the flying taxi scheme. The service is expected to be fully commercial by 2023.

The American cities won’t be the first in the world to have its skies grace such flights as the UAE city of Dubai announced its first test flight where a driverless drone hovered at a height of 200 metres above the ground for about 5 minutes.

Boeing rival Airbus unveiled its its Vahana flying car project back in 2017 and then early 2018, the model “Vahana” flying car, which the aviation firm says will turn into the most recent leap forward in the public transportation service, remained airborne for 53 seconds, achieving a stature of 16 feet at the Pendleton Unmanned Aerial Systems Range in Oregon.

Shortly after Airbus’ flight, the “air taxi” created by Alphabet’s (Google parent company) Larry Page’s Kitty Hawk startup, the electric flying “car” took off in New Zealand.

Regulators are now looking to license and bring up guidelines for the new transport scheme.