Very soon Uber will not only ride, but fly. In 2023, Uber plans to launch a service of flying taxis – UberAIR.
Technical task for architects provided for the creation of ports capable of miss up to 4,000 passengers per hour. The area occupied by Skyport should not be more than 3 acres (1.21 hectares) on the surface of the earth. Strict nomas were set for noise and ecology. “Heavenly ports” should have the technical ability to recharge the taxis, while not affecting the supply of energy to the surrounding consumers. The projects have been developed for the long term, but as the proverb says: “Prepare a sleigh in the summer”.
Several well-known architectural bureaus decided to be ready in advance for the upcoming appearance of Uber flying cabs. The concepts of Skyport show the near future and are executed in a futuristic style.
For example, Pickard Chilton in collaboration with ARUP developed the Sky Tower or “Heavenly Tower”, providing about 1000 departures and landings per hour. This is a series of modules, which, depending on the urban landscape, can be lined up horizontally or vertically.
The Beck Group project is inspired by the beauty of the hexagonal forms in bee hives, and they compare the skype itself to the bee house, where from time to time they fly out or return to the air taxi, like bees into a beehive, and the process turns into an endless repetitive cycle.
Humphreys & Partners has developed its UberAIR taxport for the center of Los Angeles. Since flying taxis will replace cars as the dominant mode of transport, the firm used the potential of existing parking garages and open parking spaces,retrofitting them for skypeports. Created from a concrete mix of concrete and limestone that produces a special kind of bacteria, this “living architecture” sample can self-repair its cracks and a damages, when activated by water.
In an effort to integrate the project with the existing parking and parking spaces, Gannett Fleming developed the concept of an intermodal transport hub with a scalable number of runways. In addition, the scheme meets the concept of sustainable development: photovoltaic receptors, transparent concrete, sound screens and charging points.
A skype from BOKA Powell will ensure the operation of vehicles taking into account the direction of the wind. There are twelve vertical take-off and landing areas, as well as microturbines built into the facade, living vegetation walls and PV-coated solar panels.
The testing of the aerotaxi service will begin already in 2020, for which will the helicopter platforms of the roof of skyscrapers are initially involved. In 2023 commercial flights Uber AIR will be launched. The first cities where the air taxi will appear will be Dallas and Los Angeles.
By the way, the aircraft itself, to the development of which even attracted NASA, is a hybrid of a quadrocopter, an airplane and a helicopter designed for five passengers. It is fully electric, equipped with four horizontally rotating screws,as in the case of a drone and yet one on the tail, and can fly at an altitude of 300 – 600 m.
Concept of personal flying transport
Transport future
Future of a Flying Machine
