inside the story with anderson cooper
nice turn my story this week on 60 minutes was about ev tolls
which is a clunky acronym for electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft
do you want to do like a quick little deeper the producer nicole marks has been working on this for
about five years and it was really just a question of waiting until the technology was
advanced enough the promise that vtol manufacturers make is that this is essentially a
better way to get around like an uber for the air they're not looking at this as toys for the rich
this has been the aircraft that we've used to validate all the work we've done over the last
decade joe ben bevert is ceo of joby aviation he's really one of the front runners in this
race to develop an evital as an air taxi he hopes to have a joby operational by 2024. our goal is to
be able to recharge in the time that it takes to unload and reload passengers and you can do that
our target is like recharge after 25 mile flight in like six minutes six minutes so it's all about
productivity right right this is the crucial piece of the business model think of it like a taxi
the more more rides that a taxi is doing every day the better the economics of running that taxi yard
there's a lot of obstacles still in the way of the vtols actually getting to the marketplace the
technology no evitol has been certified by the faa yet to actually carry passengers and to actually
operate and consumers people in neighborhoods have to agree to have a vertaport in their neighborhood
so there's a lot of reasons this may not happen as quickly as these companies would like
but this is happening i was able to go to austin texas and fly lift aircrafts evital
which is called hexa to launch this business we are focused on sort of experiential entertainment
right uh i think there's a huge market for people to just experience the thrill and joy
of flight we spoke to matt chason who's the ceo of lyft aircraft we do envision people using hexa or
a future version of hexa for or for transportation use you know with a 15 mile range you can
accommodate about 85 percent of the trips that you might take daily in your car you and you've
been talking with the military you see military applications for this first responder application
absolutely there's a lot of applications that are suited to this aircraft that can basically
use this capability to save lives we're very fortunate that the united states air force
has leaned into this new industry heavily and is helping to foster the development of evital
aircraft in the united states it was amazing to me that after about 20 or 30 minutes of doing this vr
simulation that was it that was all the training i really needed to be allowed to go into the vehicle
and and take off and fly just like the simulator we'll get the seat belt on you
okay perfect as you get in the joysticks right there
and they say are you ready for takeoff are you ready yup
you are in takeoff mode and and that's it and here's breaking ground you take off and that
just lifting off the ground it is you can't help but laugh you can't help but sort of it's just a
really cool feeling i felt safe a number of those motors can fail and the vehicle can still fly
when you want to land all you do is you position hexa above the the landing zone you press a button
on the joy on the joystick and you can take your hands off and it just it automatically lands
it only lasted about nine minutes but it was really thrilling that is cool