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Larry Page Is Quietly Amassing a ‘Flying Car’ Empire

Accepted submission by Phoenix666 at 2018-07-19 15:11:56
Techonomics

The Verge [theverge.com]:

One flying car seems absurd; Larry Page has three.

He started with Cora [cora.aero], a two-seater flying taxi [theverge.com], then added a sporty flying boat called Flyer [flyer.aero], both developed by a company called Kitty Hawk. And last week, The Verge discovered a third: Opener [opener.aero], which just came out of stealth mode. There was no mention of the Google co-founder in the startup’s announcement, but when confronted with evidence of Page’s involvement, Opener quickly issued a press release [globenewswire.com] admitting it.

Flying cars (more formally known as eVTOLs — for electric vertical takeoff and landing) are the electric scooters of aviation. Everyone from Uber [theverge.com] to Airbus [theverge.com] is working to build the lightweight aircraft and the aerial networks they will require, to say nothing of a host of well-funded startups, including Joby [theverge.com] in the US, Volocopter [theverge.com] in Germany, and China’s EHang [theverge.com].

Just last week the airline companies got upset at how disruptive SpaceX and Blue Origin are to their flight plans.


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