Porsche And Boeing Will Build Electric Flying Cars For The Very Rich

The very rich will have first dibs on a premium, pilotless "flying car" to be jointly developed by Porsche Automobil Holding SE and The Boeing Company.

Both firms will "create an international team to address various aspects of urban air mobility, including analysis of the market potential for premium vehicles and possible use cases." Porsche said the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) it signed with Boeing provides for establishing an international team to look into this air mobility solution.

This team will develop an electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft for rich people that can breeze through the air of traffic-choked cities like Los Angeles and New York. Porsche and Boeing will collaborate to build and test a prototype eVTOL based on their own design, which analysts will likely keep with the luxuriousness Porsche are noted for.

Porsche and Boeing will also venture into urban air mobility apart from developing their own eVTOL. The MOU, however, is nonexclusive, which means the partners won't exclude working with other partners on other eVTOL projects.

The team will address the other aspects of urban air mobility, and investigate the market potential and possible uses of premium flying vehicles.

"This collaboration builds on our efforts to develop a safe and efficient new mobility ecosystem, and provides an opportunity to investigate the development of a premium urban air mobility vehicle with a leading automotive brand," said Boeing VP Steve Nordlund.

Boeing is already into flying cars. One of its subsidiaries, Aurora Flight Sciences based in Manassas, Virginia, is also developing a luxury electric eVTOL for travel between cities. It's soon scheduled to fully test its first autonomous electric aircraft.

Earlier this year, this aerial drone took off vertically and, hovered for just a few seconds before landing at the company's test site. Boeing said future eVTOL flights will test forward flight and the transition phase between vertical and forward flight modes, which is the trickiest aspect of VTOL flight. Boeing is in a heated race against arch-rival Airbus SE, which started testing its own in 2018.

At the start of 2018, there were some 19 companies in the process of developing flying-cars. Apart from Boeing and Airbus, there's Kitty Hawk Corporation owned by Google founder Larry Page and Uber Technologies Ltd. that wants to operate an on-demand flying taxi service.

Uber's flying taxi service called Elevate intends to operate in Los Angeles, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Dubai. Passengers book their flights using an Uber app.