Uber, NASA Ink Deal To Make Flying Electric Taxis A Reality

In the future, taxi rides in some select cities may not mean navigating crowded streets under a deal inked Wednesday by Uber and NASA formalizing the ride-hailing company’s flying taxi project, Uber Elevate. Uber hopes to start testing its electric jet-powered taxis by 2020, Jeff Holden, chief product officer at Uber, said.

The agreement is the latest development in Uber’s “on demand aviation” plans for fleets of flying taxis, which the company expects to become a part of daily life for people who want to get from here to there in a jiffy. The four-passenger flying taxis will take off and land vertically, and will travel at a speed of about 200 miles per hour, Uber officials have said.

In April, Uber said it was teaming with the governments of Dallas-Fort Worth and Dubai to introduce its flying taxis there first, and that it was working with a Dallas Fort-Worth real estate company to identify potential “vertiport” sites — that is the takeoff and landing pads — and other partners to develop charging stations. In addition to those cities, Uber hopes to start testing the taxis in Los Angeles in 2020, and have them ready for use by the time that city hosts the summer Olympics in 2028.

Eventually, Uber said last spring, the space-age taxis may fly themselves.

Under the new Space Act Agreement, outlined Wednesday at a Web Summit tech conference in Lisbon, NASA will help Uber develop software that will help the taxis fly safely in low-altitude airspace. It is the start-up’s first venture with a government agency.

"UberAir will be performing far more flights on a daily basis than it has ever been done before. Doing this safely and efficiently is going to require a foundational change in airspace management technologies," Holden said in a statement. "Combining Uber's software engineering expertise with NASA's decades of airspace experience to tackle this is a crucial step forward for Uber Elevate."

Holden said Uber will sort out regulatory issues well ahead of the launch of the service, which will be called UberAIR.

“There is a reality that Uber has grown up a lot as a company,” Holden said in an interview with Reuters before the announcement. “We are now a major company on the world stage and you can’t do things the same way where you are a large-scale, global company that you can do when you are a small, scrappy startup.”
Under the agreement with NASA, potential problems will be identified, including how the flying taxis fit in the mix with other aircraft around busy airports and communicate with air-traffic controllers.

Watch: Uber Unveils Plan For Flying Taxi

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