Uber’s flying taxi service plans to launch its first takeoffs by 2023. One major problem, though, is that UberAir taxis need access to the sky and a place to land. That’s where Skyports will be useful. These will be special areas localized specifically for launching, landing, and customer pickup, and they look very futuristic.
In the second day of Uber’s Elevate Summit 2018, the company revealed concepts for its air taxi ports. Even if the project is in an early development stage, Uber plans to support over 4,000 passengers per hour for each Skyport. Initial blueprints come from Corgan, an architecture firm that wants to transform urban air mobility with a system that they call Connect, and it should be able to support up to 1,000 Uber eVTOLs (Electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing) each hour. The Connect system is composed of a single module that can be easily adapted for use on open sites like the skyscraper roofs of the topmost level of parking garages. A number of different Skyport designs have been submitted by other companies, too.
Mark Moore, the director of Uber’s Aircraft Engineering Systems, said that the company will be using an all-electric battery for the vehicles, hybrids not being a solution. If you worry about the environmental noise, Moore says that the air taxis will be around 15 dB quieter than a similar in size helicopter.
