Volocopter's Flying Taxi At CES 2018 Truly Makes It Feel Like We're Living The Future

We’ve been waiting for flying cars for decades, we know Uber's flying taxi is coming out by 2020. Intel not only believes we’re on the cusp of developing that technology, but also demonstrated its possibilities by flying a helicopter-car hybrid inside CES 2018.

At CES 2018 this week, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich showed off the Volocopter, an autonomous passenger drone the company is calling their version of the flying car. It comes from a German company that carried out its first flight in 2013, and began testing in Dubai last year.

The Volocopter isn’t intended to have a pilot, but you’ll be able to summon it to a landing pad nearest to your location through a smartphone app. The idea is to build an Uber for the skies, and Krzanich believes that future is very close.

The Volocopter has 18-rotors to lift itself and passengers up vertically about 200m, and is capable of cruising at 50km/h, with a maximum flight speed of 100km/h. It boasts a 30-minute flight time, thanks to nine independent battery systems, and even has a ballistic parachute on the top that deploys if too many of the rotors fail for some reason.

Unfortunately the Volocopter was only on display at CES 2018 and won't be operating in the US anytime soon, thanks to the federal aviation administration (FAA) having not yet authorised it. 

Hopefully we’ll at least see it officially beginning services elsewhere before the year is out.