Audi, Airbus, and Italdesign are still convinced that the dream of the Jetsons is just around the corner and have successfully “tested” a “flying taxi” “concept” at Drone Week in Amsterdam.
It was actually 1:4 scale model that’s a bit like a drone with a passenger compartment under it, but Audi did manage to land it on a set of wheels and had it drive away “autonomously.”
Audi and its partners say that a 1:1 scale not-model could be on the roads (and in the skies!) “as soon as the coming decade” and are pitching it for busy cities and the unlicensed masses.
In fact, Audi and Airbus are already testing this service (or, at least, a rough approximation of it) in Sao Paolo and Mexico.
The service gives people helicopter rides to a waiting car to test roughly what a flying taxi would be like from the customer’s point of view—although the flying taxi wouldn’t require to step outside of the pod like a pleb.
“Flying taxis are on the way. We at Audi are convinced of that,” says Dr. Bernd Martens, Audi board member for sourcing and IT, and president of the Audi subsidiary Italdesign. “More and more people are moving to cities. And more and more people will be mobile thanks to automation. In future senior citizens, children, and people without a driver’s license will want to use convenient robot taxis. If we succeed in making a smart allocation of traffic between roads and airspace, people and cities can benefit in equal measure.”
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