JUST JUMPING IN MY AIR TAXI

At least 20 companies, including aviation giants Boeing and cut price ride firm Uber, are developing air taxis that are run by battery power to eliminate the noise and pollution associated with helicopters and planes.
With this many companies in the running to create the first battery operated air ride it is obviously a race to the finish line with high demand for customers who plan to dominate the sky and skip the queues on the roads.
But experts are discussing whether battery energy storage technology can improve this significantly in the future to warrant this. At the current rate of development in the tech it is possible with battery energy density rising by 5 to 8 percent per year.
However, for batteries to be at a point where they make sense in small-scale aviation, they will need to achieve about five times their current density. At the current pace of battery and electric engine technology, it probably won’t be until 2030 that even hybrid electric technology is used in commercial aviation. But it is definitely on the cards.
So before you start swearing in gridlock again think Fifth Element style transportation could be with us sooner than you think with Uber announcing last week it will launch test flights as early as 2020.
The giant recently hired Tesla’s in-house battery expert, Celina Mikolajczak, to head up its effort to develop a battery that was powerful yet light enough to get its plane-helicopter hybrids in the air.
“The chemistry tech on cells and batteries is going to get better and better,” Mikolajczak said at Uber’s Elevate conference in Los Angeles. “So that means the aircraft with all electric powertrains are also going to get better and better.”