SoylentNews

Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

The egg-shaped flying river taxi is gaining support [bloomberg.com], as SeaBubbles [seabubbles.fr] 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 [twitter.com] and Anders Bringdal [twitter.com] 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.

Original Submission