Uber Technologies Inc on Wednesday unveiled a partnership with NASA that would see it develop flying taxis priced competitively with standard Uber journeys.
It also announced Los Angeles would join two other previously revealed “UberAIR” pilot schemes in Dallas Fort-Worth, Texas, and Dubai.
California and Texas are the US states with the largest number of cars.
“Uber’s participation in NASA’s UTM [unmanned traffic management] Project will help the company’s goal of starting demonstration flights of uberAIR in select US cities by 2020,” the ride-sharing company said in a statement.
Uber wants to “explore other collaboration opportunities with NASA” with a view to open “a new market of urban air mobility,” it added.
The first demonstration flights are expected in 2020, moving into commercial operations by 2023 — in plenty of time for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
The flights are to have a pilot during initial flights, but could be automated in the future, Uber spokesman Matthew Wing said.
An UberAir journey between Los Angeles International Airport and the Staples Center arena, for example, would take 27 minutes — one-third of the time for same journey taken by car.
A promotional video illustrated the app would work in a similar way to the current set-up for ordering a car ride.
However, the planned electric vertical take-off and landing vehicles “differ from helicopters in that they are orders of magnitude quieter, safer, more affordable and more environmentally friendly,” the company said, adding that journeys would be priced competitively with a standard Uber trip.
The vehicles are to take off, land and recharge upon a network of “vertiports” installed on top of parking garages, on existing helipads or on unused land around road interchanges.
Deloitte’s Pascal Pincemin said at the Paris Air Show flying taxis would not be commonplace until 2050, as their reliability would need to be established first.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by