World’s First Flying Taxis in New Zealand?

After setting up self driven cars, Google founder Larry Page is now looking at self piloting vehicles. Since October 2017 the company called Kitty Hawk has been doing stealth test flights of a vehicle that looks like a cross between a small plane and a drone. The company is run by Sebastian Thrun, the guy who set up Google’s autonomous car unit and is the director of Google X.

So what’s the big deal about this flying vehicle that takes off like a helicopter but flies like a plane? Apparently the pilot-less vehicles are going to be the first commercial air taxis in the world. They will soon be joining an official certification process unheralded by Jacinda Ardern, the Prime Minister of New Zealand.

The aircraft is called Cora. It has a wing span of 36 feet. It uses 12 rotors powered by batteries to fly. It’s endurance is a range of 99 km. It can easily carry two passengers. The company called Zephyr Airworks ran the vehicles in the covert testing mode. Now things are about to become a lot more public for what may end up being the world’s first commercial, flying taxi, service. Now that’s a science project coming to a truly fruitful conclusion.