Engineering

Boeing’s 450 Million Dollars Investment: Here’s the Futuristic Flying Taxi

Is this a glimpse into the future of transportation, or is this just one utopian movie dream?

Published

4 years ago

January 25, 2022

We all know Boeing from its ambitious aircraft projects and its reputation industry. Once again, as their new and ambitious project, Boeing invests a huge sum of 450 million dollars in Wisk Aero to further develop the flying autonomous taxi, according to Reuters. As a future with flying, autonomous, super or electric cars near; the days that we saw self-driving flying taxis only in movies are gone. At least if Boeing makes it mainstream, the sky can present everyone with the sci-fi movie set-up of today.

What is Boeing’s new investment all about?

It is not Boeing’s first investment into Wisk, but it is the biggest portion yet. It seems like Boeing is taking this project more and more seriously while trying to be the first autonomous flying car manufacturer going mainstream in the U.S. These vehicles are shortly called eVTOL, which stands for electric vehicle takeoff and landing. However, you can shortly call it a “flying car” if you want. The difference that Wisk Aero investment provides is “autonomous flight”. Since we know there are already working prototypes in the eVTOL industry, they gain their edge from the smartness of the product. You can check Wisk Aero’s aircraft on their own website by clicking here.

The future timetable

While most key dates are not announced and simply not determined from beforehand, most companies are targeting the date of 2024. However, according to the same Reuters article, “industry sources said the idea was to present it for certification around 2028”. So, we might have to wait a little bit more for our flying cars. However, they are still planning to be the first in the autonomous passenger-carrying vehicle territory while creating a company with a lot of collaborations and good funding.

Boeing is sure known for making it work when it comes to ambitious engineering projects. Despite the fact that some still find flying cars a delayed engineering dream, or some see it as an impossible-to-go-mainstream project of engineering; it is still the sci-fi dream of our childhood. While we innovate on manned planes (Read: The Fastest Manned Plane in the World: Here’s The Insane Engineering of the X-15), we can also innovate on our automated sky-taxis.