Wisk outlines air taxi service plans in Vertical Flight Society webinar

eVTOL devel­op­er Wisk plans to launch its air taxi ser­vice in the USA and has already iden­ti­fied its first city, accord­ing to CEO Gary Gysin.

In a webi­nar organ­ised by the Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety on Fri­day, Gysin and Wisk’s Chief Tech­ni­cal Offi­cer Jim Tighe spoke about the com­pa­ny’s plans for the com­ing year, and answered ques­tions about its all-elec­tric, self-fly­ing air con­cept, called Cora.

The air­craft intends to tar­get the 40–60-mile range in the USA, which Gysin described as the ‘sweet spot for the prob­lem we are try­ing to solve’. He also stressed that unlike oth­er OEMs in the eVTOL sec­tor, the com­pa­ny does­n’t have a set tar­get date for oper­a­tion.

But before launch­ing in the USA, Wisk will begin oper­a­tions with Cora in New Zealand, which Gysin describes at its ‘first step’. The com­pa­ny began a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Air New Zealand in 2018 to bring com­mer­cial ser­vices to mar­ket and lat­er this year, it plans to start the world’s first autonomous air taxi tri­al with the coun­try’s gov­ern­ment.

Gysin said: “We plan to part­ner with busi­ness­es on the front-end side which is get­ting cus­tomers and doing the logis­tics side. We don’t intend to build an app like Uber, we will part­ner with some­one to do that.

“We are invit­ing oth­er reg­u­la­tors to observe what we are doing, and the New Zealand Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty is will­ing to share data with them. But we want to learn what we need to do for this type-cer­ti­fied air­craft in the USA, and under­stand the social aspects and accep­tance. We will do this before we fly in the USA and a major city.”

Cora will seat two pas­sen­gers and is pow­ered by 12 inde­pen­dent lift fans and a sin­gle push pro­peller. It will aver­age a top speed of 100mph and Wisk has con­duct­ed more than 1,300 suc­cess­ful test flights — with no sig­nal point of fail­ure.

The air­craft will be con­trolled by a ‘pilot’ via a ground-con­trol sys­tem, only as an ‘observ­er’ to mon­i­tor the flight and pro­vide com­mu­ni­ca­tions to pas­sen­gers. Tighe said that in future, the sys­tem could have addi­tion­al flight con­trols incor­po­rat­ed into the pro­gramme, such as route chang­ing and auto­mat­ed col­li­sion avoid­ance.

Gysin added that once in ser­vice, Wisk will be both an orig­i­nal equip­ment man­u­fac­tur­er (OEM) and oper­a­tor — say­ing the com­pa­ny wants to know ‘it is pro­vid­ing the best expe­ri­ence in the ear­ly days’.

“We’re not try­ing to say we are bet­ter [at oper­a­tions] than com­pa­nies which have been doing for 50 years, he said.

“But this par­tic­u­lar tech­nol­o­gy is new and we know the air­craft bet­ter than any­one. We think we can cre­ate an expe­ri­ence that will be the best for our cus­tomers and want them to feel com­fort­able and safe.”

And Gysin added that Wisk expects Cora to be expand­ed in both size and scope. but would­n’t be drawn on giv­ing any oth­er details. He also said that part of the com­pa­ny’s expan­sion plans include launch­ing air taxi ser­vices in Euro­pean cities.

The com­pa­ny is a joint ven­ture formed in 2019 by two lead­ers in avi­a­tion — Boe­ing and Kit­ty Hawk — and Tighe said being able to draw on the expe­ri­ence of the aero­space giant was a huge ben­e­fit..

“In terms of scal­a­bil­i­ty, hav­ing a part­ner who can build a large, com­pli­cat­ed air­craft in a day is absolute­ly fantastic…having one who has been there and done that is real­ly impor­tant to us.”

Gysin added that the com­pa­ny will announce more details about its new part­ner­ships lat­er this year. Although no spe­cif­ic date was men­tioned, Tighe added that key areas iden­ti­fied include Detect and Avoid, Data Links, Air­space Inte­gra­tion and Soft­ware Devel­op­ment.

Wisk announced ear­li­er this month that it has resumed flight test­ing of Cora, fol­low­ing a brief pause in activ­i­ties due to Covid-19.

To watch the whole video, click on the play but­ton below.