Regulatory Hurdles and Future Integration

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR Welcome back Short Wavers,' your Science bestesties, Emily Kuang and Regina Barber. And this summer, we have a brand new series for you Tack camp. That's right every Monday. Check this feed for a new episode about the technological frontier Tracking down the breakthroughs, experiments, and innovations that could change everything And we're starting with a vehicle that's been promised to us for decades. This is where I thought technology was headed since the days of the Jetsons Find cars This was a fantasy of the sixties, like flying cars are not real. And I'm going to blow your mind. As long ago as nineteen fifty three, you could order a flying taxi in New York City. New York Airways introduces a new dimension of passenger comfort and convenience in helicopter travel. Okay, so these weren't technically flying cars, they were helicopters, but these air taxis in New York would take passengers To the airport from maybe the roof of an office building in Manhattan. and this would cost about seven bucks in the mid sixties, which is a little over seventy dollars today The taxis are comfortable too Not as dependable as a scheduled airline that flies over obstacles and delivers passengers by helicopter from Newark Airport to Idlewild in twelve minutes flying time. And M, we might be on the cusp of air taxis making a comeback. In Florida, a law just went into effect to build infrastructures for them in places like airports. Get out of here Are you serious? What do you mean? Like like like you're saying that I order an air taxi to my house to take me to a major airport. So that's the idea. I met Lee Witcher, an engineer at Georgia Tech in Atlanta And I met them outside of an airplane hangar where they're trying to make flying taxis a reality The legend is that this hanger used to belong to Ludicrous And the prototype he showed me is for a pilotless flying taxi. A flying taxi that flies on its own? Yes. This is a project called Raven, and it's a joint project with Georgia Tech and NASA So over at Hangner in Thornton County Airport, we have a test rig for the Raven project. It will be a roughly thirteen hundred pound Electric vertical takeoff aircraft. If you're going to be replacing some cars and maybe people going through the subway, you need to operate in densely populated areas where you just can't build giant runways. And that means you need to take off vertically. But helicopters are loud and expensive and they require a lot of power to keep them moving around So that's why we needed something new. And now a few companies say they're close to finally figuring out the science to overcome most of those barriers Today on tech camp, flying taxis, how a new generation of air taxis could revolutionize transportation and how soon you could be riding in one. You're listening to Shortwave with the science podcast from NPR Kina, so Were air taxis in New York in the nineteen fifties and sixties and seventies, yeep Wild. But they were basically helicopters Helicopters, of course, are still used for some personal travel today, especially among the wealthy. Right. But even back then, the thinking was that air taxis would just be like another form of commercial air travel In nineteen fifty one, the Civil aeronautics Board, a government agency, proposed a new class of air carrier Air taxis that linked airline points with communities lacking airline service. I mean, the customers in the nineteen sixties and seventies for these air taxis were mostly rich people and businessmen And during that time, business was good. L customers took helicopters, usually short trips to the airport, and it costs about the same that an Uber ride to the airport costs now. So what happened to all these air taxi companies? They don't exist anymore. And this is because of a complex blend of financial and regulatory reasons, including a recession in the late nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties Plus in the nineteen sixties, LA. Airways suffered some crashes. And an aerospace engineer I talk to, Marilyn Smith, says that mistress hit a peak in nineteen seventy seven That is when tragedy struck a New York airways flight there was an accident on top of the Pay and An building. and parts of the helicopter fell to the street and some people were injured and killed. And so that was the end of that. So Marilyn is the director of the Verttical Lift Research Center of Ecellence at Georget Tech And she says that the vehicles Georgia teech students are working on are different from that old era of air taxis. No more helicopters. No more helicopters. Okay. What are they making? They're technically called vertical flight vehicles and many companies brand them as air taxis. Okay. They're a combination of helicopter and airplanes And they're really ushered in by new science with a focus on safety and sustainability For one, no more fuel. Most of the air taxis in development are electric But building an aircraft that's light enough to take off, but sturdy enough to be safe and house an electric battery and luggage, it's difficult So some private companies are leading the way in this kind of research to build this new class of vehicles. Yeah, that makes sense. It's like very startupy what's happening right now. So what kinds of startups are out there Yeah, so there's a few. In the US, there's Beta, a company based in Vermont and two companies based in California, Archer and Joby. And Joby has partnered with Uber to try to get air taxis running for the public already test flown with pilots in New York and San Francisco and get this M Joby and Uber. They claim that these air taxi flights will start in Dubai This year, twenty twenty six. Wild. I just want to show you a short video of Jooby's test flight just so you can see what these things look like. It looks Like a drone, but massive Yeah with multiple propellers and it fits a lot of people. It looks a little like the Star Trek Enterprise. I mean, I wish. I think it looks just like a cessna with a lot of propellers, but I had the same thought. It is very drone like. Yeah. So I asked the President of Operations at Joby, Bonnie Simy, if these aircrafts are just giant drones. Not at all. It's no more a drone than a helicopter is a drone, or a small airplane is a drone. I mean, you see aircraft of our size at every municipal airport out there And nobody confuses those with drones. Heard, Not a drone. Yeah. apologies from this mere citizen non aviation expert over here. So what makes these Joby vertical takeoff aircraft so different? Right. So it kind of looks like a drone because it has these propellers that are like pointing up When the aircraft takes off and lands, but these propellers, they rotate ninety degrees while the aircraft is in flight the propellers better on top then move forward. Yeah, like a small propeller plane. So it's like a transformer? It is. Yeahah. So basically it transforms from a helicopter to a propeller plane Right? And this is important because then it can take advantage of physics. There's so much more power required to keep you in the air for lift. But if you can transition forward onto a wing, now the wing is producing lift that keeps you in the air and you use less batteries. Morphing into a plane, using the wings for lift saves a ton of energy it would need if the vehicle likeike stayed in this helicopter mode the whole time. Yeah. Plus, the aircraft is quieter in this mode because propellers are doing less work The noise pollution is a concern, right? So companies are working to minimize that. Very creative science, for sure, innovative. I'm seeing six propellers. I know they rotate forward Is Is six propellers though safe? Is it too many? It's all about redundancy M. So if one fails, the others will compensate. Here's Bonnie again from Joey. If an entire propulsion unit fails, then an opposing one will power down, the other four will power up And the pilot actually doesn't even notice that they lost one of the propulsion lons other than, you know they'll see a flashing light, of course, but the passengers won't feel it. Redundancies are always good, especially with air travel I'm wondering though what does the FAA have to say about all of this? the Federal aviation administration because they're ultimately in charge of regulating what is allowed in American airspace. Yeah, that's the big question for the whole industry. And to do any travel and airspace in the U.S., you need certification with the FAA, which Joey and other startups are seeking right now So the regulatory question has been a challenge. The FAA were kind of ammbushed, I think with this industry. They've really caught up and they're very proactive and very open minded. That's Lee Witcher again from Georgia Tech. We heard from him earlier So M in january twenty twenty six, the FAA announced a new office to oversee the integration of air taxis and other vehicles like drones into the airspace. Not just drones, but flying taxis into the airspace with all of the current aviation that goes on and also how to integrate vertaports. So a vertaport, that word that he just said, are basically just these like ps that these air taxis are going to land and take off from, L in the Avengers, like in Stark Tower. Yeah, in the city, right? This is already happened in LA. So some existing skyscrapers have helipads, right. So if those can be modified for air taxis for air taxis, then it's like pretty cool, right? It's easy to have this infrastructure easier And in other places, they're building new shorter buildings with big wide flat roofs for air taxis to land on Joy is currently working with partners all around the world to either modify these other helipads that exist or build these small buildings. This whole enterprise is much more expansive than I imagined. Can you describe what a commercial ride would look like, Gina? This is Tech camp. Take us to the future. You and I are gonna order a Sky Uber How does it work Right. So let's say you're in East LA at my grandma's house or my uncle's house in Pasadena. Right. And you need to get to LAX. Yeah. So you open up your Uber app And you know, you've got UberX and UberXL and Uberpet. and now they'll be Uber Air. Uber air. Yeah. So the app will tell you, hey, there's a vertiport that's only fifteen minutes away if you wna take an air taxi, so you select that. And while the car is on its way to get you, it tells the system G the aircraft ready So the Uber then brings you to to the vertbort You walk in through the door, We already know who you are because you're already part of the system and then you walk right onto the aircraft. So the whole thing seamless. you don't have to think about it. There are no TSA lines here, but it's a rideshare I have so many questions about the safety of this. But again, in this like futurist scenario, the pilot just takes you where you need to go. Yeah And then eventually they'll be self driving. Noax pilot. Node pilots. So the Georgia Tech project I mentioned earlier That's a project to develop autonomous aircraft Although those are going to face a lot more hurdles in the regulation process The people I spoke to told me that That's at least a few years off. Yeah I should hope so. Human beings are very precious cargo. I am thinking about how there is a lot of congestion already in U. S. airspace with so many planes up in the air. There have been There's been an increase in mid air collisions over some airports But Do we really need air taxis Yeah, these are all good questions. Airspace, infrastructure What's interesting is I brought up this issue of congestion and the question of whether it would be more worth it to invest this type of money into public transit or building more, you know Railways. Right, High speed trains, subway lines, metro centers, etceta. Yeah, so the experts I talked to for the story, they view this You know, the air taxis as a complement to existing public transit And this can be done in large part by modifying and scaling existing helipads rather than investing in major infrastructure projects This would be in places where they think the initial audience for these air taxis are people who are taking Ubers and other rides shares instead of public transit To this end, the FAA sent me guidance they've worked up for how to modify and scale existing helipads I think what remains to be seen is just the demand this will get from Reular folks from people like you and me. Yeah. So Em, I totally hear you. And like most people don't even know these companies exist. I didn't know this was a thing until you brought it up. Right. R But The facts are they're building the infrastructure now And that's maybe the most important point is that air taxis are coming. Gina Barber, thank you for awakening us to the fact that we are already living in the era of the Jetsons. We are and just maybe need to open our eyes to it. Would you order an Uber air with me? Absolutely not. I would wave high to you from the ground All right. For more science stories just like these, follow Shortwave on the NPR app or wherever else you are listening from Also if you know a friend who is obsessed with the idea of flying cars like maybe wants to take a ride with Gina, while I wave to you both from the ground, please share this episode with them, make their day. This episode was produced by Hannah Chin and Rachel Carlson It was edited by our showrunner, Rebecca Ramirez. Tyler Jones checked the facts. Jimmy Keeley was the audio engineer. I'm Regina Barber. I'm Emily Kuang. Thank you for listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR