Of Course Dubai Is Mere Months Away From Flying Taxis

Where are you going, sir?' 'The future.'

By The Editors
February 13, 2017 9:00 am

Flying cars, autonomous cars and drones are our future.

They’re also all one and the same, if a new program in Dubai proves to be successful.

The city-state should have the Ehang 184 autonomous aerial vehicles “flying regularly” around July, according to Dubai’s Roads and Transportation Agency. The Chinese-made Ehang, which has four legs and eight propellers (we profiled ’em here last year), can carry a single passenger up to 220 pounds, along with a small suitcase.

But that passenger isn’t driving: they’re simply picking a destination on a touchscreen and buckling in. According to an AP report, the passenger drone will then zip along at about 62 mph to its destination.

This might actually be closer to the future of the flying car, according to Michael Macauley, CEO of Quadrant Information Services, a leading supplier of pricing analytics services to property and casualty insurance carriers. As he shared with InsideHook: “The popular image is of an individual driver at the wheel of a flying car, zipping around the skies—that’s not going to happen. The average driver is not going to go through the many hours of instruction needed to obtain a private pilot license…Not only that, these vehicles will be far too expensive for individual consumer ownership.”

Once again, the future is not in your control.

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