Keep the Meter Running

By 2025, city dwellers may be able to scoot above town in a newly minted electric air taxi

- Danny Fortson

PICTURE IT: YOU awaken to the smell of freshly brewed coffee and a hot breakfast as the purser gently returns your business class seat from horizontal to upright after a few hours of solid slumber. The dawn sun blazes through the window as you descend into Newark Liberty International Airport, the perfect red-eye flight from the West Coast. And then you spend two hours snarled in traffic inching your way into Manhattan. United Airlines hopes to end that maddening fast-fast-slow that any seasoned traveler knows well. The company recently announced the first proposed route of an air taxi service utilizing an entirely novel type of aircraft, the so-called eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing). Drawing on huge advances in electric motors and battery technology, eVTOLS typically have multiple propellers that allow them to take off vertically, then tilt to allow them to fly like a plane. And unlike helicopters, with their cacaphonous thumping, they promise to be as quiet as the hum of a refrigerator, opening the possibility of inter-and intracity flights. United hopes to launch the service in 2025.