Dubai: The first air taxis will take flight in Dubai this year, but a plan to make Melbourne one of the pilot cities for the innovation has now been described as “a little optimistic”.
Joby’s electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, which will be available on the Uber platform, hit the skies for a test flight over Dubai on Wednesday.
Sachin Kansal, Uber’s chief product officer, said the air taxis would begin transporting passengers in Dubai this year, but they were yet to go through regulatory approval in Australia.
“Flying taxis, or air taxis, as some people call them, used to be in the realm of science fiction, but now they’re becoming a lot more real,” he said. “We really believe that air taxis can solve a lot of the problems that cities are facing with sustainable and safe transportation, but in the vertical dimension.”
Melbourne was originally announced as one of three official pilot cities, alongside Dallas and Los Angeles, for Uber’s air taxis in 2019.
The ride-share giant claimed it would begin flying “tens of thousands” of passengers around Melbourne from 2023 in “safe, quiet electric vehicles … for the same price as an UberX trip.”
However, Uber sold its air division, Uber Elevate, to Joby in 2021 and the two companies have now set their sights on Dubai as the first market for the eVTOLs.
The test flight showcased the fully electric aircraft, which uses six tilting propellers to rise vertically before turning to reach speeds of up to 320km/h.
Eric Allison, chief product officer at Joby Aviation, said eVTOLs were quieter than helicopters with fewer emissions.
“This all-electric, quiet air taxi is powered by technology that lets us fly over the traffic instead of sitting in the traffic,” he said. “In order to be able to scale and make this a meaningful contributor to the way people can move on a daily basis, you have to be a good neighbour. Helicopters are loud, but this aircraft is designed to be remarkably quiet.”
Allison said after Dubai, Joby expected to launch on Uber in Los Angeles and New York in the United States with the company in its final stage of certification by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
In an interview with this masthead, Allison said he was part of the Uber Elevate team that picked Melbourne as a pilot city but “we had to adapt to the way the conditions played out” when the pandemic hit.
“Our timelines were a little optimistic, but our vision was right,” he said.
No eVTOL aircraft have received regulatory approval in Australia at this stage, but a spokesman for Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) said several companies have signalled their intention to sell into the market, including Australian-owned aerospace start-up AMSL Aero.
“eVTOLs will have to meet Australian safety and airworthiness standards and will likely operate under rules similar to those applying to helicopters in the first instance,” a spokesman for CASA said. “This would require the pilot to be licensed.”
Allison said Joby had been working with CASA “for a couple of years now” to prepare for eVTOLS entry into Australia.
“We are working with them on developing the pathways to take the FAA certification work that we’re doing and bring it into Australia as fast as possible.”
Allison would not give a timeline for Joby’s launch on Uber in Australia but said he was optimistic.
“I think that there’s a very tech-forward perspective in Australia, and I think that is going to make for a great place to launch a service down the road,” he said.
The journalist travelled to Dubai with Uber.
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