A tortoise and snail collide - the traffic cop asked, what happened? - I don't know, it all happened so quickly, said the tortoise.
Our future is fast and getting faster - Cars that can fly are here
In May 2018,Uber Elevate, the ridesharing taxi company, announced at a technology conference their plan to solve city gridlock traffic problems – cars that can fly!
At the conference, Jeff Holden, Uber’s chief product officer, took the stage.
“Los Angeles is the most traffic gridlocked city in the world, the average driver spends two-and-a-half weeks a year stuck in traffic. We accept extreme congestion as part of our lives.
We have ten of the world’s twenty-five most congested cities in the U.S., costing approximately $300 billion in lost income and productivity.
Uber’s mission is to transform urban mobility. Our goal is to introduce a new form of passenger transport to the world - urban aviation, or what I prefer to call ‘aerial ridesharing.’
Always an innovator, and attracted to innovators, Jeff Holden followed Amazon's Jeff Bezos from New York to Seattle, becoming one of the earliest Amazon employees. He implemented the then crazy idea of free two-day shipping for a flat annual membership fee.
An innovation- Amazon Prime - that many thought would bankrupt the company - today, 100 million Prime members later, that far seeing idea accounts for a significant part of Amazon's profits.
Jeff Holden does that. He created these winners - UberPool, Uber Eats, and recently, Uber’s self-driving car program. So when he proposed an even crazier idea - that Uber take to the skies - it isn't surprising the Uber bosses listened.
Flying cars are actually test flying already - Jeff Holden's conference talk was about the path to wider use - and how that path is a lot closer than people realise.
By mid-2019, over $1 billion had been invested in at least twenty-five different flying car companies. A dozen vehicles are currently being test-flown.
Established players like Boeing, Airbus, Embraer, and Bell Helicopter (now just called Bell, a reference to the future disappearance of the helicopter) are also involved.
We’re past talking about flying cars. The cars are here. Uber’s goal, explained Jeff Holden “is to fully test and demonstrate flying car capability through 2020, and have public aerial ride sharing operational by 2023.”
But then Holden went even further: “Ultimately, we want to make it economically unviable to own and run a car.”
Today, in 2020, the average cost of running a car - fuel, repairs, insurance, parking, etc, is 59 cents per passenger mile.
But Uber Air’s target with its “electric vertical take-off and landing vehicles”- eVTOLs - is 44 cents per mile - i.e cheaper than driving a car!
eVTOLs are being developed by several companies, but Uber has very particular needs. For an eVTOL to qualify for their aerial ridesharing program, it must be able to carry one pilot and four passengers at a speed of over 150 mph for three continuous hours of operation.
Typical Take Off sites for eVTOLs will be car parks and hotel flat roofs .
Uber Air already has five partners committed to delivering eVTOLs - electrical Vertical Take Off and Landing vehicles -
Don't blink - The Future Is Faster Than You Think!
Taxi!
My blog post above is a condensed chapter from the book - 'The Future Is Faster Than You Think' - by Peter H Diamandis and Steven Kotler, also authors of 'Abundance' - the chapter condensed by @ijavee.
Buy the Book - From Amazon link in sidebar on the right of my blogger blog
https://yourfuturebythefuturist.blogspot.com/
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