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Rolls-Royce wants to build a flying taxi:
[...F]lying cars are happening again? Make up your mind! I can't handle all this uncertainty. Let's add it all up, shall we?
We have an Airbus and Audi partnership, currently trying to build a city car/flying taxi concept. We have Uber building a flying taxi hub in Paris. Then we have Kitty Hawk, a secret company founded by Google co-founder Larry Page -- it's working on a project called Cora. Yes, it's another flying taxi.
[...] But guess who else is joining the flying taxi race... Rolls-Royce.
Not the Rolls-Royce of luxury cars fame, Rolls Royce the engine company, that split from the car company decades ago.
That Rolls-Royce is looking to get into the flying taxi game and has drawn up plans to create an electric vehicle that could potentially reach speeds of 400 kilometres per hour (around 250 miles per hour). Rolls-Royce believes it could be ready to launch as early as the next decade, a timeline that's consistent with many of its potential competitors.
Wonder if they will give a special rate to Danny DeVito?
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Monday July 16 2018, @11:06AM
Yes but, electric motor tech has been (and still is) improving rapidly, and electricity storage tech (ie. battery) is improving too - whereas petrol engine tech is largely static and petrol storage ain't going to get any more weight efficient.
May make sense to start developing vehicles now in anticipation of further improvements in battery tech.
Biggest problem for Rolls may turn out to be legal - is it a car or is it a plane. It may matter because the company split decades ago and one half does cars and the other half does planes, might end up like Apple, agreeing to never go into music business and then iTunes...