Why you won't be flying in a taxi anytime soon
Basic achievements on regulatory and technical grounds must occur first, before the idea can work.
THE idea is certainly audacious: Thwart traffic in congested cities by flying over it. Quick, quiet, clean, cheap.
This concept - which requires a new type of battery-powered vertical takeoff and landing vehicle (VTOL) - is Silicon Valley to its core in terms of self-liberation and greater efficiency. These electric vehicles would operate from "vertiports" situated around urban areas, predominantly atop buildings. And, at some point in the future, they would be unmanned.
"In the nerd hierarchy of needs, the flying car is up there with downloadable brains and a working holodeck," Bloomberg Businessweek noted last year in a profile of Google co-founder Larry Page's aviation ambitions and the seemingly never-ending quest for personal flight. Well, those nerds are still at it.
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