Airbus plans to begin test fights of a flying taxi in 2017 with commercial service by 2026

Airbus wants to make flying taxis for city commuters.Rush-hour traffic is unbearable for many commuters today – and the problem is growing. By 2030, 60% of the world’s population will live in cities, which is 10% more than today. To address this rising concern, Airbus Group is harnessing its experience to make the dream of all commuters and travellers come true one day: to fly over traffic jams at the push of a button.

Traffic problems are becoming more acute across the globe as a result of increasing urbanisation, particularly in “megacities” – urban centres with upwards of ten million inhabitants. A good illustration is the Brazilian metropolis Sao Paulo, which set a new record in 2014: on the roads around the city, the rush-hour traffic stretched out for 344 kilometres. According to a study, these huge back-ups in Sao Paulo cost the Brazilian economy at least 31 billion USD a year; another study found that Londoners lose the equivalent of 35 working days per year idling in traffic. The situation is even worse in cities such as Mumbai, Manila, or Tokyo.

In response, Airbus Group experts are looking skywards to develop radical concepts that will relieve urban congestion. Participating in these efforts is A3, the company’s innovation outpost located in the gridlocked Valley. A3 project executive Rodin Lyasoff and his team are actively pursuing a project coined Vahana, an autonomous flying vehicle platform for individual passenger and cargo transport.

Flight tests of the first vehicle prototype are slated for the end of 2017. As ambitious as that sounds, Lyasoff insists that it is feasible. “Many of the technologies needed, such as batteries, motors and avionics are most of the way there,” explains the engineer. However, Vahana will likely also need reliable sense-and-avoid technology. While this is just starting to be introduced in cars, no mature airborne solutions currently exist. “That’s one of the bigger challenges we aim to resolve as early as possible,” says Lyasoff.

“In as little as ten years, we could have products on the market that revolutionize urban travel for millions of people.” says Rodin Lyasoff, A3 project executive.

Transport service providers are one target group for such vehicles. The system could operate similarly to car-sharing applications, with the use of smartphones to book a vehicle. “We believe that global demand for this category of aircraft can support fleets of millions of vehicles worldwide,” estimates Lyasoff.

At these quantities, development, certification, and manufacturing costs go down. And in terms of market entry, Lyasoff is equally confident: “In as little as ten years, we could have products on the market that revolutionise urban travel for millions of people.” A3 is powering ahead with Vahana and as is typical for Silicon Valley, the company thinks in terms of weeks, not years. Officially underway since February 2016, the project’s team of internal and external developers and partners have agreed on a vehicle design and is beginning to build and test vehicle subsystems.

SOURCE- Airbus