VahanaProject
It is no secret that the aeronautical company Airbus has been trying to get into urban transport for a while. Of course, this could not be carried out through land or sea, but his specialty is based in the air. This is how his Vahana project and later renamed CityAirbus.
As the company itself has communicated through a press release, the company has successfully passed the first tests of all mechanisms. In these quality tests, the people in charge have carefully looked at all the electrical components, as well as the propellers or Siemens motors of 100 KW each.
On the other hand, this CityAirbus is an electric vehicle and it can take off and land vertically. That is to say, in this case we would be facing a VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing or vertical takeoff and landing). Likewise, the taxi of the future can be piloted from within or done in a self-piloted way. That is, it can be operated remotely.
Meanwhile inside the flying taxi we will find space to transport up to 4 passengers in a comfortable way. And this urban air transport is designed to move users quickly and agilely to important destinations such as airports or train stations during days of intense traffic.
What else can we tell you about CityAirbus? Well, tests will continue over the next year and in the middle of the year it is planned to turn on all the components at the same time. Later, at the end of 2018 it is intended to carry out the first full-scale tests. In this case there would be two scheduled flights. The first of them would be without a ticket and piloted remotely, while the second would integrate 4 passengers inside, one of them being a test pilot.
Airbus has also advanced that for licenses to be granted more quickly, at the beginning you will travel with a pilot inside. Although in the near future - around the year 2023 - the intention is that the test pilot disappears from the map and everything is handled externally.