Welcome to the future of city transportation. Flying taxis have now been developed by French startup Seabubbles. The innovative design uses hydrofoils to appear as if it’s hovering above the water while producing no noise, no waves and no pollution. This incredible electric vehicle has recently been pulled over by police during a test drive along the River Seine in Paris over concerns it was going too fast.
SeaBubbles co-founder Anders Bringdal explains:
Our vehicle has the right to go at 30km/h, when normally the speed limit on the river is 12km/h. So they just pulled us over to check our paperwork and make sure that all was in order.
Traffic is an inconvenience and problem for a huge majority of the world’s population. However, Seabubbles hopes that its vehicles will help reduce road traffic by making use of waterways in urban environments instead. The startup claims that people will be delivered to their destination “at car speed, for the price of a regular cab, with no impact on the environment nor on the city’s infrastructure”.
The firm’s website adds:
Think James Bond car, available for everybody, but with zero wave, zero noise, zero CO2 emissions.
Seabubbles’ goal is to introduce its vehicles, nicknamed the Bubble, to cities in the Netherlands, France and the U.S.A by 2020. Once the service launches, users will be able to order rides using an app, the same way they would order an Uber or Lyft. Riders would then go to a dock to meet the vehicle. This high tech dock would be equipped with solar tiles, underwater generators, and wind turbines, all of which produce energy to recharge the vehicles’ batteries. Bringdal estimates that there would be 20-40 vehicles in each city, depending on whether an operator wants to use the Seabubbles primarily as water taxis or tourist vehicles.
Additionally, if the service takes off it could potentially improve the urban transportation experience for everyone, not just the company’s customers.
Seabubbles is actually not the first company that’s attempting to transform urban transportation. Several other companies including Uber, Airbus, Lilium, and AeroMobil, are working on vertical take-off and landing vehicle (VTOL) concepts in an effort to offer a solution to overcrowded roads.
Although the idea of fleets of flying cars has its critics, not everyone believes they offer a viable solution to city transportation issues. Successful entrepreneur Elon Musk believes that this method of transportation poses a serious threat to the safety of people on the ground. Although technically the vehicle isn’t flying, it just appears to be.
