According to South Korean car manufacturer, Hyundai, flying cars will exist in cities around the world by the end of this decade.
At the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) conference, a trade association for the United Kingdom motor industry, Michael Cole, the president and chief executive of Hyundai’s European operations, said the company has made “very significant investments” in urban air mobility.
“We think that by the latter part of this decade certainly, urban air mobility will offer great opportunity to free up congestion in cities, to help with emissions, whether that’s intra-city mobility in the air or whether it’s even between cities.”
Developing its urban air mobility program is part of Hyundai’s mission to become a provider of smart mobility services, which includes the creation of more efficient electric vehicles.
In January 2020, Hyundai unveiled its flying car concept, developed alongside Uber, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The eVTOL, short for electric vehicle takeoff and landing, is called S-A1.
Hyundai has also been involved in the development of the world’s smallest airport with no runway in Coventry. Scheduled to open by the end of this year, the Air-One project, funded with a £1.2 million UK government grant, will see the launch of the UK’s first eVTOL hub. The “vertiport” aims to demonstrate the effectiveness of this transportation method. In addition, it would support air taxis and autonomous delivery drones.
Hyundai is not alone in its aim to develop eVTOLs. German flying taxi startup, Lilium, recently unveiled a seven-seat electric aircraft that it says will launch as part of an inter-city flying taxi service in 2025. Boeing also revealed a working prototype of a self-piloted passenger aircraft in 2019, called “flying car.”
10 Comments
I hope not.
Flying cars have existed for decades. We call them helicopters.
There are so many things wrong with this that it looks like one of Elon Musk's ideas.
Musk's never had an idea he didn't buy.
Hyperloop. He tossed that one out and a slew of idiots started trying to develop it. Then he started the Boring Company.
"What if we put subways where the highways go? and then... and then we put highways where the subways go?" -Hyperloop + Boring Company, in a nutshell.
Hyperloop is not a new idea. Tunnels are not a new idea. Flamethrowers are not a new idea. Musk: less Tesla, more Edison.
Musk is a brilliant guy and his companies have done more to advance electric cars, and space travel than any other company and most other countries. Stop being haters
The first electric car that you can actually look like a baller in. That’s a big deal.
Must be hard to type when you can't see the screen around Musk's balls. "His" company Tesla was around before he brought his Paypal cash in and started making dumb fucking tweets. If we lived in a sane world where stock wasn't easily manipulated by slobbering fanboys he'd have been taken out behind the shed by the shareholders by now.
Hoe's no more brilliant than any of his peers, but he had money going in, so morons like you worship him at the altar of capitalism and libertarianism. He. Isn't. Brilliant.
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