Flying vehicles of the future: Companies racing to develop eVTOL "air taxis"

if you've ever had the fantasy of soaring over  bumper-to-bumper traffic in a flying vehicle   that may be possible sooner than you  think not with a flying car but with   a battery-powered aircraft called an evital a  clunky acronym for electric vertical takeoff   and landing vehicle dozens of companies are  spending billions of dollars to make ev tolls   that will operate like air taxis taking off  and landing from what are called verta ports   on the tops of buildings parking garages or  helipads in congested cities ev tolls promise   a faster safer and greener mode of transportation  potentially changing the way we work and live   sound too good to be true we went for a joy ride  to find out the story will continue in a moment i will arm the aircraft if you  were ready yeah totally confirmed   if this looks like an oversized drone i'm  about to take off and that's pretty much   what it is breaking ground right there  it's a single seat evitol called hexa   powered by 18 propellers each with its own  battery no jet fuel required you are in control   onboard computers automatically adjust for  altitude and wind you really feel the wind   up here so all i had to do was use a joystick to  control hexa's movement and speed it took about   30 minutes of pre-flight training to get the  hang of it use that yaw to rotate 90 degrees   wonderful hexa is still in its testing phase so  he had to stay close to chief pilot jace mccown   and his ground crew but they say it's flown up to  90 feet in the air and 45 miles per hour whenever   you're ready you can come back to home the  batteries last up to 15 minutes i was going to try   to land over the camera yeah absolutely to land i  maneuvered hexa into position pressed a button and   the computers did the rest right there you are  on the ground and the props are spinning down   that is cool i can't stop laughing piece of  cake that was awesome that is so much fun   wow i so just want to like take off with it i know  matt chason is ceo of austin based lyft aircraft   which makes hexa he envisions a future where  it's used by commuters to skip rush hour traffic   you can fly 10 miles in 10 minutes instead  of spending over an hour on the roads during   rush hour congestion would it be something that an  individual then in the future owns and flies from   their house to somewhere we don't see individual  ownership is very practical these are these are   very expensive aircraft we see putting fleets of  aircraft at locations where we provide maintenance   we provide training and people can come in and  basically pay per flight but that's still a long   way off federal state and local regulators not  to mention the nation's airspace aren't ready for   hundreds of thousands of commuters piloting their  own ev tolls in the skies over congested cities   so to give people a taste of the future now jason  designed hexa as an ultralight vehicle which means   it doesn't have to go through the federal aviation  administration's complex certification process but   also can't fly over populated areas jason plans to  start offering rides to paying customers for 250   by the end of this year the initial market  you see is essentially joyrides for people   yeah i think there's a huge market for  people to just experience the thrill and joy   of flight around the world all kinds of ev tolls  are being developed cargo carriers air ambulances   and a whole lot of air taxis some with a pilot  some without the air force is investing sows   airbus and american airlines and dozens of  companies are already working with the faa   it's not the flying cars that science fiction  movies anticipate it no but when you think about   it i look back over the arc of my own career  having been a pilot for 42 years and i'm just   amazed by the amount of innovation that has taken  place billy nolan was head of safety for the faa   before being named acting administrator last  month how difficult a certification process is   there because there's a lot of moving parts to  this first we have to certify the design of the   of the aircraft itself and then we look at how  it will operate is it piloted is it autonomous   we look at where we'll operate so that means  how do we put it within our nation's airspace so   once it's met that safety threshold and only until  it's met that safety threshold will be be prepared   to certify some evital companies are well on their  way we flew in a gas-guzzling helicopter with one   of the front-runners in the air taxi arms race joe  ben bevert ceo of joby aviation he took us to this   remote facility in california where he's testing  his ev tall the joby aircraft as we landed it felt   like the old guard meeting the new obviously it's  a combination of a helicopter and a plane exactly   so it can take off like a helicopter but it flies  with the efficiency of an airplane bevert has been   working on the joby for more than a decade it has  six propellers and four batteries in its wings   and will operate as an air taxi carrying a pilot  and 4 passengers he says it can fly 150 miles on   a single charge and has a top speed of around 200  miles an hour why this design so vertical takeoff   is important so we can take you to where you want  to go right we don't need a huge runway and then   with the wing it gives you the efficiency to fly  far and to fly fast you're cleared flight flex   alpha blow because it's still being tested the  joby was piloted remotely by a nearby ground crew   for flight when they fired up the motors unlike  a helicopter the joby didn't need time to warm up   it took off in about 20 seconds that's it that's  really quiet we wanted this to sound more like   the wind in the trees than the whop whop of a  helicopter noise levels are a critical issue since   evitals are meant to take off and land near where  people work and live this is below the background   noise level of many cities you know i go around  with my decimal meter on my phone and like measure   sound levels that's what you've been doing for 10  years exactly because we needed to make sure that   the aircraft was going to be quiet enough bevert  studied mechanical engineering at stanford where   he invented this popular flexible camera tripod  and later created a company that made flying   wind turbines but the joby had remained an  elusive dream there was definitely skeptics   even you know good friends of mine who  didn't believe that you could make this with   batteries and electrical propulsion the battery  technology just wasn't there it wouldn't work yeah   bevert hired john wagner away from tesla where he  helped develop the car's revolutionary batteries   to joby he figured out a way to make the  batteries lighter but still powerful enough   to get the two tiny vtol off the ground you  had to play to the strengths of battery power   and the strengths of electric motors so typical  aircraft might have one big motor but we can have   six motors distributed throughout the aircraft  and in that way operate in a much more efficient   manner the weight of everything must be the most  important thing absolutely so how do you make   a plane as light as possible you essentially  have to engineer every piece of it   the outside of the joby is made with  layers of lightweight carbon fiber   the batteries as well as computers electronics and  motors are constructed under john wagner's watch   and his team shakes bakes and spins them to ensure  they'll meet the faa's rigorous safety standards   they have to certify the aircraft  as being safe and capable of flying   to their standards they also have to certify the  production of all the parts of it exactly and the   operation the pilot training the maintenance steps  every facet is heavily regulated all this costs a   lot of money toyota has invested about 400 million  dollars in joby and bevert took the company public   last year i think the texture is good billionaire  paul ciara co-founder of the website pinterest has   also put in a small fortune he's joby's executive  chairman and says they'll launch in up to three   cities and that passengers will eventually end up  paying around three to four dollars a mile to fly   a little more than an average uber ride can you  just take me through as a passenger what it looks   like i want to get to jfk airport it's bumper to  bumper traffic what do i do take out your phone   pull out an app and with one click you're booking  the whole trip so a car is coming to wherever you   are in manhattan it's taking you to the takeoff  and landing location the verta port and you're   hopping in your joby and it's flying you to your  final destination now maybe there's a car at the   other end or you're just walking to the tail end  if people are taking cars to and from vertiports   doesn't that just add to congestion if we're  able to you know take out 80 percent of the miles   that people might be traveling and move  those miles from congested roads to the air   i think that's going to have an impact but just  a few weeks after we saw this joby aircraft fly   it crashed in february due to what federal  investigators called a component failure   no one was hurt but the ev toll was totaled  bevert says that's all part of the testing process   and is as optimistic now as he was when we  interviewed him how far are you from getting   the first joby in the sky with passengers  so we are launching our service in 2024. you   think you can do it that quickly yes there  have been a lot of companies that have said   oh we're going to do this in two years and  then it doesn't happen we're very confident   there's a lot of confidence over at wisc  arrow as well though the ev tall they're   developing will be even more complicated to bring  to market because it's fully autonomous there'll   be passengers but no pilot on board you're  not just figuring out an electric vehicle   you're figuring out a fully autonomous  vehicle that's right we're going for it you and i talked about that ceo gary guyson  says they're on track to spend about two billion   dollars the company is bankrolled by boeing and  google co-founder larry page they've been testing   the technology for the last eight years control  zap in position for liftoff so how many test   flights have you actually done so close close to  1600 test flights without you know knock on wood   without an incident selecting liftoff we watched  one of those test flights in hollister california   a team of engineers about half a mile away  started the vtol with the click of a mouse the entire route was pre-programmed why autonomous why go this route so we're going  straight to south flying several reasons one it's   safer safer he says because most plane accidents  involve human error much of commercial aviation is   already automated and guyson sees the entire  e-vitol industry going that way eventually   he's determined to get there first we do it  primarily from a safety perspective but also scale   so if you don't have a pilot in the aircraft it's  less expensive you don't have to do pilot training   you're flying four passengers um we can charge  less we don't want this to be a premium helicopter   like service we want this to be a service that's  affordable to the masses there is a hurdle   psychologically for people to get into an aircraft  that does not have a human at the controls   of course and so what we're trying to do with that  is each passenger can be in verbal communication   with the ground they can be talking to a pilot  whenever they want to so it's all designed to   provide comfort it will take time this isn't going  to happen overnight gysen wants to launch west's   four-seater air taxi service in the world's 20  busiest cities within the next decade wheels down   you don't give a date of when you think you'll  be operational yeah you know why we don't do that   because we are not in control of that part the faa  is in europe it's called yasa they're in charge   so when they certify aircraft to fly that's when  you fly the faa won't say when an autonomous ev   toll might be certified but acting administrator  billy nolan told us hailing a piloted air taxi by   2024 is well within the realm of possibility the  challenge for us is to make sure that innovation   doesn't come at the expense of safety but  clearly we are seeing the emergence of   something that's fantastic i think this is real i  mean this is no longer just the stuff of fantasy   we want to be very careful we want to be very  measured but you're absolutely right this is   real and this is happening we've come a long way  from where we were just you know a mere decade ago it's really cool taking  flight with anderson cooper   at 60 minutes overtime dot  com sponsored by cola guard

Channel: 60 Minutes

Views: 509,324

Keywords: 60 Minutes, CBS News, eVTOL, flying vehicle, flying cars

Id: 1YUv0AMq0x8

Length: 13min 40sec (820 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 18 2022