According to reports last Tuesday, Uber and Bell Helicopter expect that they will be able to bring flying taxi services to cities by 2025.
The project, called Uber Elevate, is still developing. Uber has hyped the program for the last year. The transportation service company is working with Bell Helicopter and other aerospace manufacturers to develop a fleet of air-taxis that will service large metropolitan areas.
In a recent interview with Bloomberg Television, an executive with Bell Helicopters projected the service to launch before the end of the next decade. Patrick Moulay, executive vice president for commercial helicopter sales at Bell Helicopter, emphasized the importance of the project to the company's future vision. "Air taxi is the next way for our industry," said Moulay. "It's very important for us to make sure we are among the disrupters to think about what should be transportation in the next 10-20 years."
An aerospace manufacturing division of Textron, Inc. (NYSE: TXT), Bell Helicopters is one of several aerospace companies working with Uber on its air-taxi projects. At this past year's Consumer Electronics Show, Bell Helicopters unveiled a cabin prototype for an electric, self-driving air taxi designed to work in urban environments. "Bell Helicopter is innovating at the limits of vertical flight and challenging the traditional notion of aviation to solve real-world problems. The future of urban air taxi is closer than many people realize...we believe in the positive impact our design will have on addressing transportation concerns in cities worldwide," Bell Helicopter's CEO, Mitch Snyder, said at CES.
Uber Elevate will consist of a fleet of small aircraft capable of taking off and landing vertically (VTOL). As envisioned by Uber, the air taxis will operate much like helicopters. Unlike helicopters, however, the Uber Elevate fleet will be small, electric-powered, emissions-free, and noiseless, making it uniquely adapted to thrive in urban environments.
Uber announced its air-travel ambitions last year, outlining plans to bring flying taxis to consumers in major cities over the next ten years, with major benchmarks expected to be reached in the next five years. The company has signed a deal with NASA to allow Uber to develop its urban air-taxi program, called Uber Elevate, in Los Angeles over the next three years. Uber is also expecting to test its first flying cabs in Dubai and in Dallas, Texas. The project is expected to be ready for launch in less than a decade, with the first vehicles in flight by 2025. While Uber expects that at least initially each VTOL vehicle will be expensive, they also think that the price will drop over time, and that eventually VTOL flights will become an affordable means of mass transportation - perhaps even supplanting car ownership.