VIDEO:UBER AND NASA ARE WOKING TOGETHER TO LAUNCH A FLYING TAXI SERVICE BY 2020

The reality of urban air transportation is closer than you think. In fact, UBER Elevates has already started exploring the barriers we'll need to overcome to make vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) a reality and bringing uberAIR to Dallas and Los Angeles by 2020. 

UBER and NASA are developing software which the company aims to use to manage "flying taxi" that could work like ride-hailing services it has popularized on the ground. 

The use of VTOL aircrafts will completely change the way we live in cities and, of course, our lives. The company promises quicker daily commutes, less traffic congestion and, again of course, cleaner air. But UBER also announced an important part of its plan, the Space Act Agreement signed with NASA. This agreement opens the door to start a much needed new air traffic control for low-flying and autonomous aircraft. By adding Mark Moore to its workforce, UBER has one of NASA’s VTOL experts and a veteran of the industry to run its Elevate project.

Chief Product Officer, Jeff Holden, also said UBER would begin testing proposed four-passenger, 200-miles-per-hour (322-km-per-hour) flying taxi services across Los Angeles in 2020, its second planned test market after Dallas and Fort Worth.

“We’ve studied this carefully and we believe it is scalable,” Holden said. “We’ve done the hard work so we can build skyports, and can get the throughput operationally to move tens of thousands of flights per day per city.”

Tens of thousands of flights per day, electric autonomous aircrafts buzzing from rooftop to rooftop and trips costing as little as $20, sounds like the future is now! It is fairly blue-sky thinking, the runway is not clear yet, but UBER is convinced its path forward will be free of turbulence. 

In the meantime have a look at the uberAIR concept in action in the video below: