Airbus working on flying car

Flying cars are the stuff of dreams – and Hanna-Barbera's 1960s cartoon classic, the Jetsons – but when a company as big and reputable as Airbus gets behind them, the idea of automated personal aircraft flocking over our cities may not be so far-fetched.

The French company famous for its long-haul passenger aircraft has now turned its attention to urban traffic congestion, which it says will become unbearable in a growing number of megacities by 2030, by which time 60 per cent of the world's population will live in cities – up 10 per cent on 2015.

For example, the Brazilian metropolis of Sao Paulo, which currently has 21 million inhabitants but is expected to grow to 23.4m by 2030, set a new record in 2014 when peak-hour traffic stretched out for 344km.

According to one study, these huge traffic jams cost the Brazilian economy at least $US31 billion a year, while another found that Londoners lose the equivalent of 35 working days per year idling in traffic. The situation is even worse in cities such as Delhi, Shanghai and Tokyo, which has a population of 38m.

Airbus Group's solution is Project Vahana, which is developing “an autonomous flying vehicle platform for individual passenger and cargo transport”, the first test flight of which is slated for late 2017.

Of course, the passenger drone would rely on obstacle detection and avoidance systems similar to those already seen in vehicles like the Mercedes-Benz E-Class -- even if at this stage flying an unpiloted aircraft with or without passengers over cities remains illegal.

However, feasibility studies by the Airbus consortium indicate the project's chances of success are favourable and the first step is an agreement with the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore to test a full-scale drone, called CityAirbus, over the University of Singapore in mid-2017.

Singapore's CityAirbus, which features multiple propellers like a drone, is being developed as an autonomous aircraft, but will initially be flown by a pilot. Unlike Project Vahana, it will carry multiple passengers.

“Many of the technologies needed, such as batteries, motors and avionics are most of the way there,” said Rodin Lyasoff, project executive at A3, the company’s innovation outpost in California's Silicon Valley.

Lyasoff says that while reliable sense-and-avoid technologies are beginning to be introduced in cars, no mature airborne solutions currently exist. “That’s one of the bigger challenges we aim to resolve as early as possible,” he says.

Underway since February 2016, the Vahana project's team of internal and external developers and their partners have now agreed on a vehicle design and is beginning to build and test vehicle subsystems.

“We believe that global demand for this category of aircraft can support fleets of millions of vehicles worldwide,” estimates Lyasoff.

“In as little as 10 years, we could have products on the market that revolutionise urban travel for millions of people.”

Airbus says it will target transport service providers and car-sharing groups that could use smartphones to book a vehicle, but it isn't the first company to dream of flying cars.

Chinese company Ehang has obtained authorisation to test its autonomous air vehicle designed to carry passengers in Nevada, and companies such as e-volo, Joby Aviation, Zee.Aero, Aurora Flight Sciences and even NASA are working on passenger drone prototypes.

"What’s striking is that many of these players are newcomers. Meanwhile, we’re hearing very little from the usual suspects. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s nothing going on there: they may be operating in stealth mode," said Matthieu Repellin from Airbus Group’s corporate development department.

"Several key enabling technologies are maturing. The energy density of batteries is increasing. Sensors are becoming lighter. Processing capabilities are improving. And software to make such vehicles is progressing rapidly.

"The industry expects such technologies to hit a price/performance point which would make autonomous passenger transport technically possible and economically viable. This is a highly attractive opportunity."

Asked if regulatory hurdles will continue to relegate passenger drones and autonomous air taxis to pipedreams, Repellin said: "The traditional car industry said exactly the same thing about self-driving cars. And what do we see now on the road? Google cars.

"Regulations are only a temporary barrier to entry. Projects such as Skyways and Vahana will help make such obstacles disappear someday."

In the meantime, Airbus is working to answer a list of vital questions, including how quiet these aerial vehicles would be, how safe, how they would communicate with each other and how would operators ensure they are not hacked?

What do you think? If we have the technology to allow vehicles to reliably detect and avoid each other and the obstacles around them, why not skip self-driving cars and commute in flying cars, thereby freeing up inner-city roads for more housing and other roads for enthusiasts?