Uber to begin experimental air taxi f lights in 2020
Uber’s flying cars are not called flying cars.
The company’s engineering director, Mark Moore, quietly objects to the phrase.
“I’m an engineer so I would call them the most accurate description, which is an electric vertical take-off and landing [eVTOL] aircraft.
“That’s a mouthful. So I will let the public decide.”
Flying cars, or air taxis, or eVTOLs, have long been an engineering dream.
Since before the Wright brothers took to the air, humanity has dreamed of daily, convenient, routine flight.
The idea of slipping through the air from home to work to appointments without having to deal with traffic or roadworks is a far cry from the air travel reality of long queues, hours spent in airports and the indignity of removing your shoes in front of other tired passengers at security.
Many have tried, and all of them have failed.
Now Uber says it is close to making it a reality.
The company, best known for services that let you call a cab on a smartphone app, says it will begin experimental flights in 2020 and a commercial launch by the end of 2023.
What is more, it says the service will not be reserved for those who can currently afford to charter a helicopter to fly them across a city.
“We have zero interest in doing this for the elites,” Moore said.
He has been working on flying machines for 32 years at Nasa and is adamant that this time it is happening for real.
“I’m so grateful that the technology didn’t take 10 more years and I’d already retired, and that I could see this wonderful transition from research, and everything become real.”
What has been the big breakthrough?
“It’s a convergence, where the electric motors have become so good, the batteries have got so good, the digital controllers for those motors have got so good, that all of the different pieces of that distributed electric propulsion architecture are ready to go.”
He faces many sceptics. Richard Aboulafia, a wellknown aircraft industry analyst at the Teal Group, said Silicon Valley technologists, excited by disruption, had been too keen to rush a shiny new vision which is not yet realistic.
“I’m just not convinced that from an economic standpoint, a technology development standpoint, that we’re anywhere near ready for this longawaited future,” he said.
An approach more grounded in reality would be incremental improvements, slowly making existing helicopters safer, cheaper and quieter.
But, Aboulafia said, people in the technology development business did not like incremental measures.
“They like a story of out-ofthe-box transformation.”
If Uber is right, and he is wrong, it will be a reality in less than five years’ time.
Electric flying shuttles, operated by professional pilots, would fly for a maximum of 100km at a time and navigate between skyports which stretch high above city centres and motorways.
They will cut out hours spent sitting in traffic in congested cities.
The idea is repeated short trips, charging for five minutes in between each as they stop to unload and pick up passengers.
Each would be as productive as 20 Uber cars on the ground. Uber’s belief is that it can use its expertise with software managing and tracking trips to organise the airspace.
It is leaving the actual vehicles up to outside companies, engineering partners that are building futuristic-looking flying machines themselves, at their own expense.
Some of them, such as Texas-based Bell Helicopters, have a long pedigree in the aerospace world.
But Uber said it was not looking for a new kind of helicopter – there was a need for something quieter and safer.
Critically, the aircraft are designed to have many parts that can fail and leave them still able to fly.
“There’s no question that the technology is available for these vehicles to be dramatically safer, quieter, more efficient and more affordable than helicopters,” Moore said.
But can it make any money? Initially, it is likely to be significantly more expensive than Uber cars, at $5.73 (about R82.20) a passenger mile (1.6km), compared with $1.80 (R25.80) for a private Uber taxi.
After a few years, Moore said, pooling passengers and more efficient use of the vehicles would bring this down to $1.84 (R26.40).
Eventually, mass-manufactured pilotless vehicles, with cheaper batteries, carrying four passengers at a time will bring costs down to $0.44 (R6.30) per passenger mile – less than the cost of running your own car.
Aboulafia said he had seen it all before, in the craze for “very light jets” which first took over the aviation world 15 years ago and then failed to live up to the hype.
“It’s a simple calculation. The low prices are dependent upon untenable numbers, and the untenable numbers are dependent upon the unsustainable low prices,” he said.
“On-demand air travel is fundamentally expensive.”
Even if the new designs are highly successful, and the existing market for privately run civil rotorcraft – currently about $1bn (R14bn) a year worldwide – triples, that is still a tiny fraction of the $130bn (R1.86-trillion) jet liner market.
“It’s going to be a nice level of growth relative to existing helicopter services.
“But changing society and making everyone billions? Nope.” –
‘The most accurate description is an electric vertical take-off and landing [eVTOL] aircraft’ Mark Moore
UBER ENGINEERING DIRECTOR