Hyundai will build electric flying taxis for upcoming Uber Elevate service
Cars
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Ubers elevate aerial taxi service gets an unlikely partner here at CES 2020 in the form of Korean automaker Hyundai.
Together the two companies debut this the essay one urban aerial mobility vehicle, a flying taxi that people use to get around the cities of the future.
The SA-1 seats four passengers and it's a small aircraft.
It's capable of electrical vertical takeoff and landing.
It's got a total of eight rotors.
Four that are dedicated to the vertical takeoff and landing and four more that can tilt between two different modes.
Once it reaches it's cruising altitude of around 1,000 to 2,000 feet, the four tilting rotors tilt forward and it converts to fixed wing aerial operation, which is more efficient than using the hovering mode.
Motors.
Its top speed is around 200 miles per hour but the optimal cruising speed is around 115.
At that speed you can for example get from downtown San Francisco to San Jose in around 20 minutes.
Heck you can cross the entire LA Metro area in the same time.
That's impressive.
But perhaps the most impressive detail is that I'm told that this electric aircraft only needs around six to seven minutes to recharge between trips.
They gotta be cramming some serious current They're now being fully electric means that it is quieter than a helicopter, and with multiple rotors that should be safer, which makes it more ideal for aerial use.
And this is just one of a three part solution that Hyundai's offering the city that includes the F of landing station and an S link sort of urban mobility ground vehicle.
All three are going to work together.
The Uber elevate is working with Hyundai and about a half dozen other aeronautics companies and it says it is going to start testing its elevate service in 2020.
That is this year, and it is projected to be available to customers in the Uber Air app around the year 2023.
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