Ride in a pilotless flying taxi, anyone?
Larry Page’s Kitty Hawk has been testing such a vehicle in New Zealand since late last year and is coming out of stealth mode, the Silicon Valley company announced recently.
“The dreamers from California met the visionaries from New Zealand,” Kitty Hawk said in a press release that lauds New Zealand for having “a government and society with an eye to the horizon.”
The technology, eight years in the making, had been searching for its own Kitty Hawk, where it could test “an air taxi, affectionately named Cora, that could take off like a helicopter and transition to flying like a plane,” according to the release.
Mountain View-based Kitty Hawk, which is financed by Google co-founder Page, describes Cora as an air taxi.
“Cora rises like a helicopter and flies like a plane, eliminating the need for a runway and creating the possibility of taking off from places like rooftops,” a fact sheet by the startup reads.
Cora is all-electric, with self-driving software and seats two. But it won’t be available to just anybody. Its goal is to become part of an airline-like or ride-sharing service.
When? Nobody knows.
“We have a lot of work to do and we are working constructively with regulatory authorities,” the Cora team, formerly known as Zee.Aero, says on its fact sheet.
Zee.Aero, by the way, had been testing flying cars in California in the past couple of years. The fact sheet mentions that Cora has an experimental permit with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and New Zealand regulators, but only that the company is looking forward to sharing Cora with the New Zealand public.
When reached for additional comment, a Kitty Hawk spokesperson would only refer us to the company’s fact sheet and website.
Cora can fly between 500 feet to 3,000 feet above ground, has a 36-foot wingspan and can go at a speed of up to 100 miles an hour. It has a range of about 62 miles right now.
Kitty Hawk is led by CEO Sebastian Thrun — of Google X, Google’s self-driving vehicle unit and Google Glass fame. Kitty Hawk’s operations in New Zealand, however, is being led by Zephyr Networks, whose chief executive is Fred Reid, founding CEO of Virgin America.
