Uber Technologies have announced that they will test a flying car in five years, pushing their target even further behind by two years for what is now being called the new frontier in mobility. “With battery technology radically improving in terms of size, power and storage capacity of batteries, we are now in the position for manufacturers to build vehicles that have multiple rotors that create a safe environment for vertical takeoffs,” Dara Khosrowshahi, chief executive officer at Uber, said in an interaction with the media in New Delhi. “We think it will take five years or so for these vehicles to be available on a pilot basis.”
The flying car mission which started after Uber hired NASA’s veteran engineer Mark Moore early last year for its flying car initiative that they are calling Uber Elevate. In April last year, Uber had ambitiously declared that it would be ready to test its first vehicle that could take vertical takeoffs like a helicopter by 2020. However, now with less than two years to go, they’ve pushed the date back even further.
Uber however is far from the only one working on a flying personal automotive, Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page is backing two flying car projects aside from Toyota Motor and Airbus who are also backing similar projects.
‘They will be safe, they will be quieter and we are talking to manufacturers right now and cities on how you build this technology to be safe,” Khosrowshahi said. . “Our operations are not profitable today and India accounts for 10 percent of our trips,” said Khosrowshahi.
