Uber Hires a Nasa Veteran Who Thinks We'll Start Seeing Flying Cars In Next Three Years (bloomberg.com)

Uber is getting serious about its intentions of building a flying car. Uber's plan involves airborne taxis that will travel 50 to 100 miles between "vertiports" that connect passengers between their homes and offices, according to a report on Bloomberg. Now it is hiring the right leader for this project. From the report: In 2010, an advanced aircraft engineer at NASA's Langley Research Center named Mark Moore published a white paper outlining the feasibility of electric aircrafts that could take off and land like helicopters but were smaller and quieter. The vehicles would be capable of providing a speedy alternative to the dreary morning commute. Moore's research into so-called VTOL -- short for vertical takeoff and landing, or more colloquially, flying cars -- inspired at least one billionaire technologist. After reading the white paper, Google co-founder Larry Page secretly started and financed two Silicon Valley startups, Zee Aero and Kitty Hawk, to develop the technology. Now Moore is leaving the confines of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, where he has spent the last 30 years, to join one of Google's rivals: Uber Technologies Inc. Moore is taking on a new role as director of engineering for aviation at the ride-hailing company, working on a flying car initiative known as Uber Elevate. "I can't think of another company in a stronger position to be the leader for this new ecosystem and make the urban electric VTOL market real," he says.

Comments

Re:Already saw them 70 years ago

[AchiestDragon]

yea and there still classed as light aircraft and fall under the same regulations

Not really

[s.petry]

Safety issues for these flying cars, roads below them, and then consider the already overloaded ATC systems in the US. The idea may be interesting, but three years won't happen. Should it happen? Well, as the AC says above me, can we prevent drunk/bad drivers? Can we ensure that when one of these has an engine failure, it does not take out half a city block or a few dozen cars on the freeway making traffic much worse?

I hope he realizes also, that Helicopters are very dangerous and require a huge clear space for takeoff and landing. You are not going to have a bunch of loose propped cars buzzing around without people losing limbs.

We are not quite to the Jetson's level of technology, and won't be for way more than 3 years.