SAN FRANSISCO - In a speech at the Web Summit in Lisbon , Uber’s head of product Jeff Holden announced updated information to Uber Elevate, which is Uber’s flying car taxi service that Holden first hinted at back in September of 2016.
Holden announced that Uber has signed a Space Act Agreement with NASA to create a brand-new air traffic control system to manage the low-flying, possibly autonomous aircraft. Since then, Uber Elevate has been working on plans to bring a flying taxi service to Dallas-Fort Worth and Dubai.
Holden anounced that Los Angeles will be added to that list of locations by 2020.
Uber also produced a video to demonstrate what using its aerial taxi service would look like in future.
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In an interview, Holden argued that even without a demonstrable product, Uber Elevate is indeed closer than many people think. “There’s been a great deal of progress that’s been hard to see from the outside, because a lot of this is just hard work at the drafting table,” he said.
However, Uber isn’t the only one working on flying cars or a flying taxi service. Airbus has been working on CityAirbus, developing a VTOL taxi for a 2018 test flight.
There’s also Volocopter, who successfully tested a flying car in Dubai.