Flying taxis are on the horizon

Taking Commuting To New Heights

- MICHAEL LIEDTKE

WHEN HE WAS still a boy making long, tedious trips between his school and his woodsy home in the mountains during the 1980s, Joe Ben Bevirt began fantasizing about flying cars that could whisk him to his destination in a matter of minutes.

As CEO of Joby Aviation, Bevirt is getting closer to turning his boyhood flights of fancy into a dream come true as he and latter-day versions of the Wright Brothers launch a new class of electric-powered aircraft vying to become taxis in the sky.

The aircraft—known as electric vertical take-off and landing vehicle, or eVTOL—lift off the ground like a helicopter before flying at speeds up to 322 km per hour with a range of about 161 km. And these craft do it without filling the air with excessive noise.

"We are just a few steps from the finish line. We want to turn what are now one- and two-hour trips into five-minute trips," Bevirt, 51, told AP before a Joby air taxi took off on a test flight in Marina, California.

Archer Aviation, a Silicon Valley firm backed by Stellantis and United Airlines, has been testing its own eVTOLs over farmland in Salinas, California, where a prototype called 'Midnight' could be seen gliding above a tractor plowing fields last November.