But after years of wishful thinking, it\u2019s suddenly happening. Investment in advanced aerial mobility (as the sector is known) has more than tripled in the last year, and analysts at Morgan Stanley expect the global air taxi market to be worth \u00a32.7tr by 2050.<\/p>\n
Early or late, the future is en-route and will be coming in to land sooner than the majority of people realise. A number of companies around the world are currently preparing eVTOL vehicles (electric vertical take-off and landing vehicles), which could revolutionise the way we get around big cities.<\/p>\n
Quiet, comfortable and carbon-free, eVTOLs promise to rise above congested roads, easing urban transport issues while getting passengers to their destinations in record time. Meanwhile, regulators on the ground are working hard to prepare the rules and infrastructure required to make this new form of transport feasible.<\/p>\n
Read more about air taxis:<\/strong><\/p>\n Many developers believe their vehicles will be safety certified and cleared for take off by 2025, if not sooner. Boeing, Airbus and Hyundai are some of the familiar names building air taxis. Another is Joby, which bought Uber Elevate, the ride-sharing giant\u2019s foray into eVTOLs, in December 2020. Meanwhile, British firm Vertical claims to have the highest number of conditional pre-orders with the likes of Virgin Atlantic and American Airlines among the investors lining up for its VA-X4 vehicle.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s going to be a quiet and pleasant, fast and efficient way of getting around,\u201d says Andrew Macmillan<\/a>, director of infrastructure at Vertical. \u201c[The VA-X4] allows you to travel 100-plus miles [160km] at 200mph [322km\/h]. It takes off vertically and then transitions to fly horizontally, giving you that range.\u201d<\/p>\n The VA-X4 will carry four passengers and a pilot. In the rear, two pairs of people will sit facing each other like in the back of a London taxi. As a fare-payer, you can look out of the windows and chat with your fellow flyers without the need for ear protection or microphones. That\u2019s because, like the majority of eVTOLS, the VA-X4 flies using quiet electric rotors that, per journey, produce less carbon than a Tesla travelling the same distance on the roads below.<\/p>\n Air taxis are not exactly the flying cars promised by The Jetsons<\/em>, Blade Runner<\/em> and Back To The Future<\/em>, however. Rather, it\u2019s electrified air travel scaled down to black cab proportions. It\u2019s Uber for the skies. Think helicopters without the emissions or the reliance on one main rotor.<\/p>\n \u201cHelicopters are amazing machines, but they\u2019re quite noisy, they\u2019re very expensive and they\u2019re quite dangerous as well,\u201d Macmillan says. \u201cOne of the reasons the VA-X4 is safe is that you\u2019ve got eight rotors, all electric powered, and each of them has a separate motor. If you lose one, you don\u2019t lose the vehicle.\u201d<\/p>\n If eVTOLs are revolutionary in what they might do for urban transport, they\u2019re more evolutionary in terms of the underlying technology. Electric propulsion, super-efficient batteries and lightweight composites underpin air taxi design and all of it comes from technologies being developed in tandem sectors.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we\u2019ve been able to reap some of the benefits of what\u2019s been happening on the surface side of electric propulsion,\u201d says Clint Harper, urban air mobility fellow at Urban Movement Labs, a non-profit designed to help facilitate future transport solutions in Los Angeles. \u201cThe overall design of the aircraft, how they fly, how they stay in the air, you know, we\u2019re building off lessons that have been learnt over the last century of air travel.\u201d<\/p>\n The point is that eVTOLs are not flying cars at all. \u201cThis is, in fact, aviation \u2013 the next evolution of it: a quieter, cleaner, more sustainable aviation,\u201d says Harper\u2019s colleague, Sam Morrissey, executive director of Urban Movement Labs. \u201cOnce we reframe it back to aviation, I think people understand how and why we\u2019re going to see these new vehicles and this new technology as quickly as we\u2019re going to.\u201d<\/p>\n Urban Movement Labs is helping the city of Los Angeles prepare for the advent of eVTOLs. The famously horizontal city grew by sprawl and its freeways are known for traffic jams. Morrissey believes advanced air mobility could ease the problems on the ground and \u201cmake travel happen in a way that\u2019s not [currently] physically possible.\u201d<\/p>\n His example is travelling from downtown Los Angeles to Santa Monica, 15 miles [24km] away. \u201cIt\u2019s physically impossible to make that trip in under 30 minutes. But, say my child was in a hospital in Santa Monica, with this new technology I could make that journey in minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n Los Angeles isn\u2019t the only place that\u2019s preparing for flying taxis. S\u00e3o Paulo, Osaka and Singapore are some of the sprawling, densely populated, global cities at various stages of planning for advanced air mobility. Closer to home, Europe\u2019s first \u2018vertiport\u2019 \u2013 the name for eVTOL landing sites \u2013 is being built in France in time for the 2024 Paris Olympics. Vertiports have also been proposed for the UK, where a number of intercity eVTOL routes have already been planned.<\/p>\n Imagine travelling cross-country from Liverpool to Hull, or flying over water from South Wales to Cornwall, or Belfast to Glasgow. Even a seemingly pedestrian journey from Heathrow Airport to Cambridge takes\u00a0two hours or more by car or train. You could do it in 20 minutes in an air taxi.<\/p>\n In order for those journeys to become a reality, however, much more planning and infrastructure is required. eVTOLs may plug into existing air traffic control structures and communication frequencies, but regulators will need to develop new licensing and credentials standards. There\u2019s also the rather pressing question of where exactly air taxis will land and take off from.<\/p>\n Initially, they are likely to fly to and from existing airports and helipads, but they\u2019ll very soon need their own spaces within our cities, explains Harper. \u201cOnce we talk about integrating those into the urban fabric of the neighbourhoods or communities, there\u2019s a lot of things to think of,\u201d he adds. \u201cIt\u2019s going to take dedicated infrastructure, which includes recharging these vehicles, maintenance and servicing, and storing them overnight.\u201d<\/p>\n In science fiction, flying cars often dock on skyscrapers, but that\u2019s unlikely to be practical in the real world. Would you want to climb to the top floor of a tall building just to catch a taxi? Morrissey believes vertiports could instead be built on top of, or alongside, existing transport hubs so that passengers can connect from one mode to another. \u201cWe see this as integrating with the existing bus, rail and transit networks in places that are truly multimodal hubs,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Planning is vital. In the past, new transportation technologies have come along and surprised society. \u201cThe steam locomotive was created and we had to build tracks and railroads. The bicycle and the internal combustion engine were invented and we had to build roads,\u201d says Morrissey. Even today\u2019s electric scooters caught governments and city planners napping, with the vehicles hitting roads before rules were drawn up to govern their usage.<\/p>\n There is reason to believe that advanced aerial mobility will be different, however. There is a (metaphorical) runway between now and the vehicles\u2019 launch, during which planners have time to work out how, where and why eVTOLs should fly. \u201cI think, for the very first time in human history, we\u2019re able to develop a transportation system to serve a new mode of transportation before that mode of transportation exists,\u201d says Morrissey.<\/p>\n As well as flying taxis, eVTOLs could be used for search and rescue, transporting organs for transplant, as well as delivery and tourism. Estimates vary, but we could see hundreds or even thousands of them in the skies above the UK in the coming decades, with remotely piloted or even automated vehicles coming in time. However many there are, experts now agree that it\u2019s not a case of if, but when the technology will arrive.<\/p>\n \u201cSafety certification is the tipping point,\u201d says Macmillan. \u201cOnce you start seeing that happen, then you know it\u2019s real because you\u2019ll just see them flying through the air.\u201d<\/p>\n Read more about the future of transport:<\/strong><\/p>\n By Ian Taylor Published: Wednesday, 16 February 2022 at 12:00 am It\u2019s hard to decide whether flying taxis are arriving very late or extremely early. On the one hand, the promise of airborne cabs zipping between skyscrapers has been a science fiction staple for decades. On the other, it wasn\u2019t long ago that air taxis […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":6198,"template":"","categories":[54],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"7"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2022\/02\/flying-cars-take-off-how-air-taxis-are-about-to-revolutionise-how-we-travel.jpg",1200,800,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2022\/02\/flying-cars-take-off-how-air-taxis-are-about-to-revolutionise-how-we-travel-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2022\/02\/flying-cars-take-off-how-air-taxis-are-about-to-revolutionise-how-we-travel-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2022\/02\/flying-cars-take-off-how-air-taxis-are-about-to-revolutionise-how-we-travel-768x512.jpg",768,512,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2022\/02\/flying-cars-take-off-how-air-taxis-are-about-to-revolutionise-how-we-travel-1024x683.jpg",800,534,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2022\/02\/flying-cars-take-off-how-air-taxis-are-about-to-revolutionise-how-we-travel.jpg",1200,800,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2022\/02\/flying-cars-take-off-how-air-taxis-are-about-to-revolutionise-how-we-travel.jpg",1200,800,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Ian Taylor Published: Wednesday, 16 February 2022 at 12:00 am It\u2019s hard to decide whether flying taxis are arriving very late or extremely early. On the one hand, the promise of airborne cabs zipping between skyscrapers has been a science fiction staple for decades. On the other, it wasn\u2019t long ago that air taxis…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/6197"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Air taxis<\/h2>\n
Integrating air taxis into cities<\/h2>\n
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