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Airbus flying taxi ready for further testing

2020-08-09T06:01:33.386Z


The aircraft manufacturer is developing an automated electric machine capable of carrying four passengers above road traffic.


CityAirbus, the prototype flying taxi from the European aircraft manufacturer, continues to take off slowly but surely. The aeronautic giant unveiled new images of its fully electric and automated device a few days ago. The machine, equipped with several propellers, looking like a giant drone having mated with a helicopter, carried out a vertical takeoff then a hovering flight a few meters above the ground more ambitious than that carried out a few months ago before a landing smoothly, without any human assistance.

No passengers were on board. Other tests are scheduled by the end of the month in Germany, in Manching (Bavaria). The 8-meter-long machine, proud of its four double rotors powered by batteries, must ultimately be able to transport four passengers at a speed of 120 km / h but a range of fifteen minutes.

VIDEO. City Airbus, the flying taxi that interests the RATP, has taken off

Intended to replace part of the road traffic and thus decongest traffic in congested city areas, the CityAirbus could cause a sensation and enter service during connections in urban areas during the Paris Olympic Games in 2024 between Roissy-Disneyland Paris and Roissy-Saint -Denis. We will have to wait until 2030 to hope to see the development of commercial services to reduce ground traffic to major economic or tourist centers such as La Défense, Massy or Versailles.

The RATP has already shown interest in the project, imagining poles that flying vehicles could connect quickly, equipped with “vertiports” allowing flying taxis to recharge.

Each country has its own model

The race for flying taxis is accelerating. The South Korean group Hyundai announced, at CES 2020 in Las Vegas, that it would produce flying devices for Uber, which intends to launch a network of shared air taxis in 2023. 100% electric vehicles capable of flying at altitude from 300 to 600 m and at a speed of 289 km / h, and able to carry four people. In February 2019, the American company Joby Aviation raised 100 million dollars to produce its impressive taxi with twelve rotors and five seats for flights of several hundred kilometers.

The Chinese company Ehang has passed the second. On January 7, an unmanned taxi took off over the test track in Raleigh, North Carolina. A first test which lasted five minutes with, on board, the governor of the State. The company is planning commercial flights to China as early as this year.

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The future of flying taxis looks bright. Reality would then catch up with fiction, that of the film "the Fifth Element" imagined by Luc Besson and released in 1997.

Source: leparis

All life articles on 2020-08-09

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