In 2022, Boeing invested in $450 million with Wisk, a company working on a flying car. The next year, it fully absorbed Wisk. By 2030, it hopes to have Wisk’s autonomous flying taxis operating in Asia. Boeing Chief Technology Officer Todd Citron revealed the plans to Nikkei, the Japanese news publication.
Citron did not tell Nikkei where exactly in Asia that Boeing hopes to send the taxis. Nor did he say whether Boeing’s Wisk would operate a taxi service directly or sell its aircraft to companies that would provide the service instead. The Nikkei report mentions that Japanese firm SkyDrive and German company Volocopter are aiming to begin operating in Japan by 2025.
Wisk’s aircraft aren’t exactly flying “cars” in the sense that they can toggle between driving and flying. They’re so-called electric vertical take-off and landing vehicles, or eVTOLs. The ones that Wisk developed are like a mix between a helicopter and a plane. A Wisk video of a test flight from August gives you the gist.
The crafts are part of a wave of vehicles designed to overcome the problem of too many polluting cars on the road by making them electric and putting them in the sky instead. They’re also autonomous, like a Waymo or Cruise taxi for the skies above your local metropolis. Wisk has announced agreements with the Houston, Texas suburb of Sugar Land and the Los Angeles-adjacent city of Long Beach, California to figure out how to implement its technology in real-world applications.
The vehicles aren’t certified to fly in the United States yet, though Wisk says it’s working on getting them approved by the Federal Aviation Administration. Citron told Nikkei that Wisk would get that settled before seeking a similar certification in whichever Asian market it launches in.