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How the future of flying cars is getting off the ground

CADE METZ ERIN GRIFFITH

Engineers and entrepreneurs have spent more than a decade nurturing this new type of aircraft, with hopes of one day making them as affordable as SUVs

It was sleek, cone-shaped, a little confusing – like something Hollywood would give a scifi villain for a quick getaway. It wasn’t a helicopter. And it wasn’t an airplane. It was a cross between the two, with a curved hull, two small wings and eight spinning rotors lined up across its nose and tail.

At the touch of a button on a computer screen under a nearby tent, it stirred to life, rising up from a grassy slope on a ranch in central California and speeding toward some cattle grazing under a tree – who did not react in the slightest.

“It may look like a strange beast, but it will change the way transportation happens,” said Marcus Leng, the Canadian inventor who designed this aircraft, which he named BlackFly.

Black Fly is what is often called a flying car. Engineers and entrepreneurs such as Mr. Leng have spent more than a decade nurturing this new breed of aircraft, electric vehicles that can take off and land without a runway.

They believe these vehicles will be cheaper and safer than helicopters, providing practically anyone with the means of speeding above crowded streets.

“Our dream is to free the world from traffic,” said Sebastian Thrun, another engineer at the heart of this movement.

That dream, most experts agree, is a long way from reality. But the idea is gathering steam. Dozens of companies are now building these aircraft, and three recently agreed to go public in deals that value them as high as US$6-billion. For years, people like Mr. Leng and Dr. Thrun have kept their prototypes hidden from the rest of the world – few people have seen them, much less flown in them – but they are now beginning to lift the curtain. Mr. Leng’s company, Opener, is building a single-person aircraft for use in rural areas – essentially a private flying car for the rich – that could start selling this year. Others are building larger vehicles they hope to deploy as city air taxis as soon as 2024 – an Uber for the skies. Some are designing vehicles that can fly without a pilot.

One of the air taxi companies, Kitty Hawk, is run by Dr. Thrun, the Stanford University computer science professor who founded Google’s self-driving car project. He now says autonomy will be far more powerful in the air than on the ground, and that it will enter our daily lives much sooner. “You can fly in a straight line and you don’t have the massive weight or the stopand-go of a car” on the ground, he said.

The rise of the flying car mirrors that of selfdriving vehicles in ways both good and bad, from the enormous ambition to the multibillion-dollar investments to the cutthroat corporate competition, including a high-profile lawsuit alleging intellectual property theft. It also recreates the enormous hype.

It is a risky comparison. Google and other self-driving companies did not deliver on the grand promise that robo-taxis would be zipping around our cities by now, dramatically reshaping the economy.

But that has not stopped investors and transportation companies from dumping billions more into flying cars. It has not stopped cities from striking deals they believe will create vast networks of air taxis. And it has not stopped technologists from forging full steam ahead with their plans to turn sci-fi into reality.

The spreadsheet was filled with numbers detailing the rapid progress of electric motors and rechargeable batteries, and Larry Page, Google co-founder, brought it to dinner.

It was 2009. Many startup sand weekend hobbyists were building small flying dr ones with those motors and batteries, but as he sat down for a meal with Dr. Thrun, Mr. Page believed they could go much further.

Dr. Thrun had only just launched Google’s self-driving car project that year, but his boss had an even wilder idea: cars that could fly.

“When you squinted your eyes and looked at those numbers, you could see it,” Dr. Thrun remembered.

The pair started meeting regularly with aerospace engineers inside an office building just down the road from Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. Mr. Page’s personal chef made meals for his guests, including a NASA engineer named Mark Moore and several aircraft designers from Stanford.

Those meetings were a free flow of ideas that eventually led to a sprawling, multibillion-dollar effort to reinvent daily transportation with flying cars. Over the past decade, the same small group of engineers and entrepreneurs fed a growing list of projects. Mr. Moore helped launch an effort at Uber, before starting his own company. Mr. Page funnelled money into multiple startups, including Mr. Leng’s company, Opener, and Dr. Thrun’s, Kitty Hawk. New companies poached countless designers from Mr. Page’s many startups.

“It is the Wild West of aviation,” Mr. Moore said. “It is a time of rapid change, big moves and big money.”

The next few years will be crucial to the industry as it transitions from what Silicon Valley is known for – building cutting-edge technology – to something much harder: the messy details of actually getting it into the world.

BlackFly is classified by the government as an experimental “ultralight” vehicle, so it does not need regulatory approval before being sold. But an ultralight also cannot be flown over cities or other bustling areas.

As it works to ensure the vehicle is safe, Opener does most of its testing without anyone riding in the aircraft. But the idea is that a person will sit in the cockpit and pilot the aircraft solo over rural areas. Buyers can learn to fly through virtual-reality simulations, and the aircraft will include autopilot services such as a “return to home” button that lands the plane on command.

It has enough room for a 6-foot-6 person, and it can fly for about 40 kilometres without recharging. The few Opener employees who have flown it describe an exhilarating rush, like driving a Tesla through the sky – an analogy that will not be lost on the company’s target customer.

Mr. Leng sees all this as a step toward the starry future envisioned by The Jetsons, the classic cartoon in which flying cars are commonplace. “I have always had a dream that we could have unfettered three-dimensional freedom like a bird does – that we can take off and just fly around,” he said.

BlackFly will initially be far more expensive than your average car (perhaps costing US$150,000 or more). And its combination of battery life and mileage is not yet as powerful as most anyone’s daily commute requires.

But Mr. Leng says he believes this technology will improve, prices will drop to “the cost of an SUV” and the world will ultimately embrace the idea of electric urban flight.

He compares BlackFly with one of his other inventions: a new kind of foam padding that moulded itself to your body when you sat on it. He did not initially know what it would be good for, but this “memory foam” wound up in office chairs, car seats and mattresses. In much the same way, he is unsure how BlackFly will work its way into everyday life, but he is confident of the possibilities.

Others in the field are skeptical. They estimate it will be years – or even decades – before regulators will allow just anyone to fly such a vehicle over cities. And they say the technology is too important and transformative to remain a plaything for millionaires.

When Dr. Thrun watches his flying vehicle – Heaviside – rise up from its own grassy landing pad, he sees more than just the trees, hills and crags of the California test site. He envisions an American suburbia where his aircraft ferries people to their front doors some time in the future. Yes, there are regulatory hurdles and other practical matters. These planes will need landing pads, and they could have trouble navigating dense urban areas, because of power lines and other low-flying aircraft.

Even so, Dr. Thrun says Kitty Hawk will build an Uber-like ride-hailing service, in part, because of simple economics.

Many believe this is how flying cars will ultimately operate: as a taxi, without a pilot. In the long run, they argue, finding and paying pilots would be far too expensive. This arrangement is technically possible today. Kitty Hawk and Wisk are already testing autonomous flight. But once again, convincing regulators to sign off on this idea is far from simple. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has never approved electric aircraft, much less taxis that fly themselves.

“It is going to take longer than people think,” said Ilan Kroo, a Stanford professor who has also worked closely with Mr. Page and previously served as CEO of Kitty Hawk. “There is a lot to be done before regulators accept these vehicles as safe – and before people accept them as safe.”

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2021-06-14T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-06-14T07:00:00.0000000Z

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