Uber Elevate – Uber Plans to take the Passengers over the Skies with Flying Cars
For a decade, Uber has made the taxi industry restless by its services. The company is working on the self-driving cars and the testing of the self-driving cars was helped at Pittsburgh. Now, Uber is taking steps for the most promising flying cars.
Uber is working on the fully electric aircraft which is aimed to take off and land vertically. These are not flying cars, which mean that they can fly in the sky and also they can drive on the road. These technologies were aimed to make people free from pollution and traffic jams. This is the dream since the period of the planes and the automobiles. Many popular sciences in 1926 cover this idea. Henry Ford assured that this idea was near in 1940. And it is one of the technologies that modern companies should produce. Companies can attempt to produce such technologies instead of designing the apps for on-demand services.
Now, Uber tries to be the one to make that dream come true. Goliath, the San Francisco based transportation company has no objective in building or designing these things, instead, it aims to initiate the market, bringing the government and private parties together to solve the stack of technical, infrastructural and the regulatory problems starting from battery density, aircraft certification to aircraft control. Uber’s product chief, Jeff Holden says that by doing all the above things it will generate the potential for the new transportation method.
Once the pieces are kept in place, Uber can do, enrolling pilots, advising on routes, collecting the company’s fare on the share and connecting the customers with the huge customer base. Holden says that, they are working to make that idea possible and their intention is to make it possible faster.
Take-off
It is nor harder to build the flying cars. Within five years, Uber expects to produce the fully electric vertical takeoff and landing plane. The plane can fly 100 miles with 150 mph speed, which can carry many passengers and the pilot.
Aviation experts say that the timeline actually makes sense in this field. Boeing and Airbus have introduced fly-by-wire systems and lightweight, composite materials to commercial aviation. Consumer support is one of the key factors to prove that the software can make a multi propeller aircraft fly that too as simple as thumbing an iPhone. Electric cars and computers have moved the battery technology forward to the next level. The US Department of Energy is spending millions of dollars to promote the research. This concept of Uber is called as Uber Elevate.
Uber Elevate is expected to be operated in a fixed-wing, tilt-rotor aircraft and they are expected to take off from the helipads, not from the space-hungry runways, then they swing their wings to the thousand feet up for the efficient level flight. Using many little rotors instead of the big one will cut down the noise. Uber also has many capable partners; they may help uber in achieving this objective.
NASA flew its GL-10 greased lightning with 10 motors last year, for the first time. California based Joby Aviation’s plans to have fully vertical-takeoff and landing taxis with two-seat and 12 motors within five years.
Volo, the Germany based company expects its volocopter with 18 whopping propellers to be available in the market by 2018. The Pentagon has invested $89 million in Aurora Flight Sciences for the Lightning Strike a hybrid embedded VTOL, which looks like the big harmonica chasing the little harmonica.
Tom Aldag, the director of R&D at National Institute of Aviation Research at Wichita State University, said that he predicts that this technology will happen quickly, though there are many other headwinds.
Stay afloat
The fact that keeps the flying taxis from soaring is the old fashioned red tape. The agency doesn’t have the power to certify commercial electric aircraft. It is not certified as the civilian VTOL plane, although it is looking at the Bell’s 525 helicopters and Agusta Westland AW609 civil tiltrotor.
Anderson said that the FAA will not feel any thrill about the semi-autonomous planes, which are whipping the human programmers through the glide path of SFO.
The navigation systems of today are less experienced than what these aircraft would request, which controls the more than a dozen propellers simultaneously.
Yet, Uber’s product chief remains optimistic because of the agency’s consensus standard systems. By the mid of 1990s, FAA permitted the private market to frame the rules that govern new types of aircraft, which then twists and approves. By this way, FAA created the light sport aircraft class, which then guided in new designs like Icon’s stall-resistant and folding A5.
The fundamental aspects of making this aircraft safe and viable are electric propulsions and semi autonomous software so the regulators should these two.
The FAA will also go with it. But the money should not put in the 2021 arrival date. It is tough to conceive all the novel topics in the period of five years.
Uber flight
Consider, someone has figured out how to make the flight and FAA also approves it, at last, FAA and NASA implemented the NextGen air traffic control system, to keep the things raping into one another. Finally Uber has to implement this service.
Holden said that the company may buy the aircraft and hire the pilots to make them fly or they may join the manufacturer who handles the titles while uber connects them with passengers and advises on the routes. Owning a plane requires a huge amount.
Without any doubt, Uber will find interested passengers and willing pilots for a payday. The difficult part of this is getting approval from the local governments. Since the company expresses less than a sterling history of getting with the regulators.
Uber dropped the temporary and promotional helicopter service in January in Utah for the Sundance film festival and the officials felt that the flights violated the country codes and also they posted a safety hazard.
Holden said that they are coming in a collaborative form. In the next few years he expects to convince the local lawmakers, they should make them accept the flying cars will reduce the traffic congestions and also the pollution.
The good news for Uber is that it is not like other futuristic forms of high-speed transportation like Hyperloop and maglev trains. Most of the American cities have the infrastructure to run the flying cars and the US has about 6000 helipads. Most of these helipads were privately owned, it should be noted that, whether these helipads have the outlet, which is to charge up the tired aircraft.
NASA’s chief technologist for on-demand mobility, Mark Moore said that the ultimate problem for most of the transportation solutions is that, the infrastructure will be lacking. But that is not the problem with the Uber’s flying cars. That’s pretty awesome, and it helps to move easily and quickly.
Holden predicts that Uber Elevate will be launched in little more than five years. As soon as it is launched, it will gather users and increase more routes. It will not be the same fare as the normal Uber ride, it will cost little high, because, the passengers are not going to have the Uber ride they are going to fly in Uber. The Uber flying cars will fly at the rate of 150mph. These cars will save passengers’ time also.