The egg-shaped flying river taxi is gaining support, as SeaBubbles seeks to close its third funding round in under a year and aims to firm up interest from potential customers, including the city of Paris and companies in the San Francisco Bay.
To build the first battery-powered bubble-shaped ships that hover a few inches above the water and transport as many as six people at a time, founders Alain Thebault and Anders Bringdal last month raised 3.45 million euros ($3.6 million) from French insurer Maif and venture-capital fund Partech Ventures.
[...] The river taxis rely on reducing the amount of drag on the water, thanks to a similar technique to the one that propelled Thebault and Bringdal's record-setting Hydroptere sailboat in the air.
The water taxis are mini-hydrofoils, which work great when the water is calm.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 13 2017, @01:10AM
Don't they work better (less vomit inducing, anyway) than normal boats even when the water isn't calm?
Are you talking hydrofoils, or "mini-hydrofoils"? Because as bob_super says, their wave tolerance is related to the hydrofoil's physical dimensions. The water will need to be calmer for a mini-hydrofoil than a maxi-hydrofoil.