Boeing lifted its flying taxi (video)

Boeing Aircraft Corporation, like manyother companies and startups are participating in a lively race to create self-driving passenger drones. And the developer has already prepared one sample of one urban flying taxi, which was tested on January 22 in the city of Manassas (Virginia).

& times

Prototype passenger aircraft transportcompletely electric, and the declared range of flight equals 80 km. Thus, air taxi will be able to deliver the client not only to any point of the city, but also to its suburb. The length of an autonomous transport drone is a little more than 9 meters, and its wingspan is 8.5 meters.

Unfortunately, the first flight of the aerotaxi was notspectacular. In its open-air test task, the car, in autonomous mode and without passengers on board, only took off, hung for a while and landed at the take-off point. But everything went in normal mode. Now developers have to work out transitions from vertical to horizontal flight modes, as well as provide routes to the drone to move in airspace. It will take more than one year. Meanwhile, among the competitors of Boeing are such serious players as Uber, Airbus and Audi, Volocopter, Ehang, Aston Martin and Rolls-Royce.

Source: Boeing