- This is a flying taxi.
There are videos of them all over the internet.
They're sleek, futuristic,
and promise to cut your commute in half.
But most people actually have a hard time
envisioning themselves stepping on board.
- Climbing aboard an aircraft
that doesn't have a pilot inside is very new.
- [NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON] 'That would look ugly of two
of those colliding in the sky.'
- But safety isn't the only concern.
Many are wondering who these flying taxis
will actually benefit, and what communities they might harm.
- What I don't wanna see
is what's happening around airports today:
where you have communities that don't have access
to the aviation system,
but they're bearing the impacts associated with aviation.
- One way or another, the arrival of flying taxis
seems to be a matter of when, and not if.
And if companies like Wisk Aero
can figure out how to implement them in a way
that's not just safe, but truly accessible,
all of our commutes might look a little different
in just a few years.
- The technology is proven.
We have an awesome fleet that flight tests around the clock.
I'm hoping that I don't have to teach my daughters to drive.
This will be something that is in place and in use
when that time comes.
We're trying to spread the joy of flight to everyone.
- This is "Just Might Work,"
a show about surprising solutions
to the world's biggest problems.
Urban transit, especially in American cities,
could use a facelift, or maybe an actual liftoff.
That's where eVTOLs come in.
- eVTOL is an acronym:
E-V-T-O-L, which stands for electric vertical
take-off and landing aircraft.
- eVTOLs promise to be sustainable, scalable,
and as affordable as a rideshare-
and it's projected to become
a multitrillion-dollar industry.
- When introducing a new transportation technology,
we have a whole history of mistakes to learn from.
- Clint Harper is an aviation expert
with Urban Movement Labs,
a nonprofit collaboration of government, businesses,
and the community,
that works to deploy new transportation tech into cities.
- [Reporter] 'They're popping up in cities
from coast to coast,
and renters, they can use an app.'
- Urban Movement Labs was initially created
in response to electric scooters
that appeared on city streets seemingly overnight
without much time for cities to plan
and understand the technology,
and how it might be integrated
into the overall transportation system.
We wanna make sure that that doesn't happen again
with any future technology,
and correct some of the wrongs
that have been done in the past.
United States is primarily built around
the personal automobile.
To accommodate those freeway systems,
many underrepresented, disadvantaged,
and communities of color were plowed through,
and dismantled and disrupted.
Similar to aviation, those users of those freeways,
typically, the benefits that's created through that
aren't enjoyed by the communities
that were disrupted or that were destroyed.
As this new technology emerges and we have an opportunity
to reimagine new infrastructure that might be required,
how can we ensure that we don't make those similar mistakes?
Look at the companies that are out there now,
that's been a part of their vision,
and I think it's part of their their business model
to do that.
- We're working with regulators and partners
to make sure that this service
is woven into communities and environments correctly.
What we're hoping is that by using Wisk,
you actually reduce the load
on the rest of the transportation ecosystem.
- Uri Tzarnotzky is the designer
of Wisk Aero's eVTOL,
an ambitious project backed by Boeing.
Wisk is one of the few eVTOL companies
that plans to ferry passengers
without a human pilot on board.
- This is a short flight demonstration
taking off from Long Beach Airport and landing at LAX,
which is an insane drive in rush-hour traffic.
This is just eight or ten minutes.
- eVTOLs like Wisk's
won't be taking off from just anywhere.
They will follow predetermined flight paths
that takeoff and land on so-called "vertiports,"
which are currently undergoing testing
in cities around the world.
And while these aircraft
might seem like a new iteration on helicopters,
they're a category in their own right.
- Helicopter's got that single rotor.
We've got 12.
Any two could fail
and we could still complete our mission safely.
Fewer moving parts, no hydraulic fluid.
Clean, all-electric-
whereas it could be hundreds of dollars to fly
on a helicopter today,
it would be a fraction of that on our aircraft.
- Wisk runs flight tests on its prototype
nearly every day of the week.
So, Tzarnotzky's focus these days
is largely on making the vehicle seem, well, welcoming.
- I like how intentional you're being here with this shape
and the use of material-
I wonder if there's an opportunity to use a pop of color
to indicate things
that someone would really intentionally need to use.
We're making sure
that we design something that's accessible.
We've invited people into the studio.
We've had people that use assistive mobility devices:
walkers and canes and wheelchairs.
The interface in the cabin is accessible.
We don't want to have anyone have to fiddle with anything
to make it work for them.
It should feel like home.
Our primary use case is the commuter:
someone taking this to and from work.
People will be arriving at a vertiport
by bus, or car, or bike,
and this will just be one segment along their route.
If we've done our job well,
this will seamlessly integrate into rideshare apps,
and it will just be like another piece
of that multimodal journey.
- While many eVTOL companies
hope to become cost-effective,
Wisk is making a big bet on automation.
With the support of automated systems,
operators will control multiple flights from the ground
rather than in the air.
- As we increase the number of airplanes,
we need to ensure that the workload of the operator
is not too high,
and that the user interface helps the operator
in the task it has to do.
Using eye tracker, we want to make sure that the operators
can gather the information they need.
And with physiology,
we can see if their heart rate increase
above a certain threshold,
and understand that the workload was too high.
- With more than $6 billion
being poured into a handful of upstart companies like Wisk,
this technology is on its way.
There are expectations that people will be traversing
Los Angeles during the 2028 Olympics via eVTOLs.
The question now
is whether it will actually improve our cities.
- In communities where urban sprawl has already occurred,
eVTOLs offer a solution to bring people
on the outskirts of those mega cities
into the city center in a quiet, eco-friendly way.
- Package delivery, medical supply,
disaster response use cases
are things that are emerging as well.
Looking into the future,
I think we should be driving forward
multimodal integration:
hubs that traditionally serve bus, trains.
If we can incorporate an aviation component to that,
then now we're starting to lift up the transportation system
as a whole.
If I need to get 30 miles away
and it's gonna take 50 minutes,
but I have an aviation option
that might get me there in 15 minutes,
that's the future that I think I would like to see.