With RC drones growing in popularity, it figures that sooner or later someone would try to figure out how to scale them up into a vehicle you can ride. Companies all over the world are tinkering away on drone taxi projects, but one company in Bristol might just beat them all to the punch.
Vertical Aeronautics, a firm that used to manage F1 racers, has developed a prototype drone taxi designed for short-freight hops between cities. The big difference between this one and other similar projects is that instead of being remote-controlled like a traditional drone, this vehicle would have a pilot on board.
Vertical figures that since the remote aspect is holding everyone else up so much, it might be smarter to start with a manned service that can be upgraded to something remote-controlled later. Vertical wants short-freight flight to be an easy, economical option for customers, and believes the drone taxi is the best option because it requires no additional real estate for runways and is completely powered by electricity. Vertical believes that on their current course, they could have commercially available drone taxi services running by 2022.
