Uber announced yesterday that it plans to test flying cars within three years near Dallas and Dubai, as reported by Greg Bensinger in The Wall Street Journal. Uber chief product officer Jeff Holden made the announcement at the Uber Elevate Summit being held this week in Dallas.
Bensinger writes, “Mr. Holden said Uber has the regulatory muscle and logistical know-how to be a leader in flying-car transport.” Holden put target costs at as little as $1.32 per passenger mile, “about the same price as the UberX service costs today,” Bensinger reports.
The announcement builds on a vision outlined in an Uber white paper published last October, which states, “Just as skyscrapers allowed cities to use limited land more efficiently, urban air transportation will use three-dimensional airspace to alleviate transportation congestion on the ground. A network of small, electric aircraft that take off and land vertically (called VTOL aircraft for Vertical Take-off and Landing, and pronounced vee-tol), will enable rapid, reliable transportation between suburbs and cities and, ultimately, within cities.”
The paper posits that electric VTOL craft will overcome the noise, inefficiency, pollution, and expense of helicopters, which are built to hover rather than cruise.
The paper cites several barriers that must be surmounted, relating to certification; battery technology; vehicle efficiency, performance, reliability, and safety; air-traffic-control issues; cost; noise; emissions; landing infrastructure; and pilot training.
Uber has developed a model based on a vehicle with a gross weight of 4,000 lb. with a four-person capacity (“including the pilot, if there is one”) and batteries having a specific energy of 400 Wh/kg with a 2,000-cycle life. According to this model, the vehicle will require one minute of full 500-kW power at takeoff and landing and can cruise at 150 mph on 71 kW of power.
Bensinger reports that Uber doesn’t plan to build its own flying cars—instead, the company “…is partnering with several companies to push the technology, including Embraer SA and Textron Inc.’s Bell Helicopter. For landing pads atop buildings, it is working with Ross Perot Jr.’s Hillwood Development Co.”
