In the 1985 science fiction movie Back To The Future, the protagonist Marty McFly says to the scientist Dr Emmett Brown: “Hey Doc, you better back up. We don’t have enough road to get up to 88.” Brown shrugs and responds: “Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? A super-sized drone that can carry humans? Or an air taxi like a Flying Uber? No longer just a pie-in-the-sky, the thing you will soon be able to see taking off from vertiports in city centres such as New York, Los Angeles and Chicago is all that and more.
Commercial air taxi service could begin in early 2025 if all the regulatory permissions are forthcoming. Manufacturing of electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOLs) for non-commercial use, like the US Air Force, is likely to begin later this year.
