Uber and Hyundai join forces to launch air taxi service

Ride-hail­ing firm Uber and Hyundai Motor Com­pa­ny have teamed up to build and devel­op air taxis for use in cities around the world, with the aim of being com­mer­cial­ly oper­a­tional by 2023.

The announce­ment was made at the 2020 CES tech­nol­o­gy con­fer­ence in Las Vegas, where Hyundai unveiled its all-elec­tric self-fly­ing con­cept, the SA‑1. The air taxi can car­ry up to four pas­sen­gers and fly on trips up to 60 miles (100km), at an alti­tude of between 1,000–2,000ft.

It will be pilot­ed ini­tial­ly, before even­tu­al­ly becom­ing autonomous, and will only need between five and sev­en min­utes to recharge — accord­ing to the auto­mo­tive giant.

Eric Alli­son, Head of Uber Ele­vate, said: “Hyundai is our first vehi­cle part­ner with expe­ri­ence of man­u­fac­tur­ing pas­sen­ger cars on a glob­al scale. We believe Hyundai has the poten­tial to build Uber Air vehi­cles at rates unseen in the cur­rent aero­space indus­try, pro­duc­ing high qual­i­ty, reli­able air­craft at high vol­umes to dri­ve down pas­sen­ger costs per trip. 

“Com­bin­ing Hyundai’s man­u­fac­tur­ing mus­cle with Uber’s tech­nol­o­gy plat­form rep­re­sents a giant leap for­ward for launch­ing a vibrant air taxi net­work in the com­ing years.”

As part of the part­ner­ship, Hyundai will pro­duce and deploy the air vehi­cles, with Uber pro­vid­ing air­space sup­port ser­vices, con­nec­tions to ground trans­porta­tion, and cus­tomer inter­faces through an aer­i­al ride share net­work. Both par­ties are col­lab­o­rat­ing on infra­struc­ture con­cepts to sup­port take-off and land­ing for this new class of vehi­cle.

Uber wants to con­duct ini­tial flight demon­stra­tions of its Ele­vate ser­vice lat­er this year, and plans to debut the new air taxi ser­vice in Dal­las, Los Ange­les and Mel­bourne.

Jai­won Shin, Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent and Head of Hyundai’s Urban Air Mobil­i­ty (UAM) Divi­sion, said: “Our vision of Urban Air Mobil­i­ty will trans­form the con­cept of urban trans­porta­tion.

“We expect UAM to vitalise urban com­mu­ni­ties and pro­vide more qual­i­ty time to peo­ple. We are con­fi­dent that Uber Ele­vate is the right part­ner to make this inno­v­a­tive prod­uct read­i­ly avail­able to as many cus­tomers as pos­si­ble.”