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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. I'm about to step

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Speaker 1: into a flying taxi, and if that's not radical enough

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Speaker 1: for you, this one has no pilot.

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Speaker 2: That's Bloomberg reporter Colum Murphy. He's based in Beijing, and

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Speaker 2: he volunteered to go on a test flight in a

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Speaker 2: test model of a flying taxi in the southern Chinese

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Speaker 2: city of Guangzhou.

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Speaker 1: Fasten your okay, I'm just gonna fasten the seatbelts.

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Speaker 3: In the air.

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Speaker 1: Please do not touch the door. Okay, I got it,

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Speaker 1: Thank you. So I'm buckled in and we're just about

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Speaker 1: to take off. I can't believe I'm doing this and

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Speaker 1: that there's nobody flying this.

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Speaker 2: Column. Did not touch the door as instructed and tried

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Speaker 2: to stay calm as the machine showed one hundred feet

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Speaker 2: up into the air.

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Speaker 1: Out in the windows.

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Speaker 2: The prototype vehicle Column Rodin was designed by China based

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Speaker 2: e Hang Holdings, and it could become the world's first

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Speaker 2: commercially operating flying taxi as soon as this year.

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Speaker 3: It's here and it's now, and it's probably a lot

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Speaker 3: earlier than people have any idea about it.

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Speaker 2: That's Angus Whitley, a Bloomberg Global Business reporter based in Sydney.

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Speaker 2: He says that right now, all over the world, transportation

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Speaker 2: companies are racing to put driverless cars into the sky.

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Speaker 2: Billions of dollars in investments and venture capital have fueled

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Speaker 2: the technology up to this point, and companies like e

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Speaker 2: Hang have started to prove the concept. But now comes

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Speaker 2: the hard part, tackling the regulatory and logistical hurdles standing

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Speaker 2: in the way of making flying taxi fleets commercially viable.

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Speaker 2: And it turns out where in the world these businesses

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Speaker 2: are operating could play a critical role in who takes

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Speaker 2: off first. Here's Colum again.

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Speaker 1: It's a mode of transport that has yet to take off,

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Speaker 1: but by some estimates, could be worth as much as

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Speaker 1: one trillion dollars by twenty forty.

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Speaker 2: This is the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah

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Speaker 2: Holder today on the show the flying Taxi Companies that

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Speaker 2: are determined to turn what was once a fantasy into

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Speaker 2: our transportation reality, our own column. Murphy is officially one

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Speaker 2: of the first people on Earth to try out a

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Speaker 2: flying taxi. He agreed to get on a call with

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Speaker 2: me and share what the experience was like.

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Speaker 1: It's god like this oval shaped cabin and with a

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Speaker 1: lot of glass, which I imagine is to enhance or

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Speaker 1: maximize the views that you can get once you're flying.

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Speaker 1: So it's a bit like a chopper helicopter, but the

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Speaker 1: scale is much much smaller. What's particularly unusual about it

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Speaker 1: is that it has eight arms, and each arm has

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Speaker 1: two sets of rotators. So when you look at it

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Speaker 1: from the ground and it's up in the air flying,

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Speaker 1: it really filled me with a sense of an eerie feeling,

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Speaker 1: if you will, because it just looks like an insect

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Speaker 1: chopping its way through the sky. A fighter, yeah, exactly.

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Speaker 1: But the manufacturers rely or stress that it's these eight

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Speaker 1: arms and the sixteen rotators that are at the core

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Speaker 1: of its safety, and it's sort of fail proof ability

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Speaker 1: to fly and deal with any circumstance that comes its way.

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Speaker 2: I'd understand if this isn't what you pictured when we

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Speaker 2: first said flying taxi. Angus Whitley, Bloomberg's Global business reporter,

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Speaker 2: had his own frames of reference.

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Speaker 3: My favorite flying cars are actually in the James Bond franchises,

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Speaker 3: just because they are so simple and so ludicrous. Or

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Speaker 3: first one probably in The Man with the Golden Garn

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Speaker 3: in the seventies and they just put wings on a

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Speaker 3: normal car and it takes off.

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Speaker 2: It's as easy as that.

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Speaker 1: It's as easy as that.

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Speaker 3: Yes, And I suppose the point when you look at

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Speaker 3: these films is there've been a fiction of our imagination

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Speaker 3: for decades and decades. They've been held up as this

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Speaker 3: sort of goal and fantasy, and if you think about it, now,

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Speaker 3: this reality has arrived, and in many senses it's totally

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Speaker 3: different from all the sort of variance we've seen on

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Speaker 3: the screen in the last few decades.

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Speaker 2: E Hang Holding's white hovering insect like contraption is one

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Speaker 2: example of this new kind of aircraft. It's meant for

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Speaker 2: short trips.

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Speaker 3: It's essentially a drone. It's electric, it's battery powered. It

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Speaker 3: recharges in a couple of hours, and it buzzes around.

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Speaker 3: It's a short distance electric drone. Its range is pretty small.

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Speaker 3: It's twenty miles. It can fly at less than one

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Speaker 3: hundred miles an hour. But it's a short distance little thing.

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Speaker 3: And it looks like a little car cockpit if you like.

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Speaker 3: There's no seat for a pilot, but there's a flat

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Speaker 3: screen in the front tells you all the critical information

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Speaker 3: about the flight.

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Speaker 2: China's e Hang Holdings is just one of the companies

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Speaker 2: piloting what they hope could become the uber of the future.

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Speaker 2: There's something of a space race underway among flying taxi makers,

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Speaker 2: and each model has its own design and fuel.

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Speaker 3: This is just a burgeoning emerging industry that has more

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Speaker 3: than two dozen really serious EV tour makers and we

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Speaker 3: say ev TOLL that's it stands for electric vertical takeoff

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Speaker 3: and landing.

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Speaker 2: Are we seeing traditional airplane makers and car makers try

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Speaker 2: to invest in autonomous flying vehicles as well?

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Speaker 3: Of course, you have the old aviation of like the

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Speaker 3: Old Guard, and that's Boeing and Airbus. Boeing's fully owned

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Speaker 3: business called Whisk is making an electric aircraft that can

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Speaker 3: carry four passengers with no pilot, and they're planning to

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Speaker 3: launch that before the decade is out, before twenty thirty.

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Speaker 3: Airbos also has its own variant, Embra, the Brazilian aircraft manufacturer.

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Speaker 3: So you have this old Guard, and then you have

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Speaker 3: this legion of upstarts like Jobie and Archer and e Haang.

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Speaker 3: They're really just emerged as these special manufacturers. And then

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Speaker 3: you have this huge range of established names from the

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Speaker 3: car industry. So you have Hyundai, there's Stilantis, there's Toyota,

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Speaker 3: there's even Tencent, China's Tencent like technology makers, so that

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Speaker 3: they're drawing all this manufacturing know how, this technology know

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Speaker 3: how car industry expertise along with this huge, big stock

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Speaker 3: of aviation expertise and likes of Boeing and Airs, and

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Speaker 3: it's not clear who the winners are going to be.

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Speaker 2: Winning in this context means getting this very new technology right,

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Speaker 2: but it also means getting it to market and turning

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Speaker 2: flying taxis into a viable business.

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Speaker 3: We've had one hundred years of air travel evolve. We've

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Speaker 3: had the jet era, and now we're into this revere

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Speaker 3: of urban air mobility or advanced air mobility. If you

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Speaker 3: think about what's happened in the jet era, we've boiled

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Speaker 3: down to essentially Giopoli, didn't we We had Boeing an

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Speaker 3: air bus, and now almost I think we'll get a

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Speaker 3: filtering out in the same way. We have dozens and

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Speaker 3: dozens of players vying to enter this space, and it's

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Speaker 3: not clear that many of them will survive. And the

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Speaker 3: prize if we can break through this frontier is by

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Speaker 3: some estimates just enormous. And if you look at estimates

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Speaker 3: by Morgan Stanley. For instance, this broad market for urban

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Speaker 3: air mobility, which includes electric passenger aircraft flying taxis, of

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Speaker 3: them without a pilot, some with, is going to be

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Speaker 3: worth one trillion dollars by twenty forty, So that's the

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Speaker 3: estimated prize.

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Speaker 2: The prize is so huge in part because these pilotless

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Speaker 2: aircraft's promise to solve a major urban problem.

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Speaker 3: There are some use cases if you like, that are

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Speaker 3: often cited. The first one is flying taxis are a

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Speaker 3: sort of solution to chronic congestion that we're seeing around

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Speaker 3: the world in huge big metropolis is from Tokyo to

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Speaker 3: New York to London to Southeast Asia.

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Speaker 2: Need to get to your board meeting downtown, but traffic

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Speaker 2: is at a standstill. Flying taxi want to go to

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Speaker 2: the football playoffs, but parking is a nightmare. Flying taxi

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Speaker 2: need to catch your flight, but the highways shut down

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Speaker 2: flying taxi.

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Speaker 3: Then there's the kind of intercity shuttle use case. And

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Speaker 3: then there's that sort of tourism case which we're seeing

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Speaker 3: emerging that we see e Haang try and capitalize on

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Speaker 3: in China as a way of taking tourist rides. Perhaps

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Speaker 3: supplanting the sort of helicopter trips, making them more affordable,

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Speaker 3: making them shorter, making them autonomous, And there are thousands

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Speaker 3: of locations and Ehang's eyes that could support that user case.

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Speaker 3: These flying taxis are going to at some point going

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Speaker 3: to have to integrate in the way that airlines travel

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Speaker 3: around the world as well. So the idea is that

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Speaker 3: perhaps these flying taxis could connect to larger airports and

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Speaker 3: you might take a flying taxi from downtown Manhattan up

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Speaker 3: to the JFK or LaGuardia and jump on a plane,

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Speaker 3: a conventional aircraft somewhere else. So it's that's why a

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Speaker 3: lot of the orders for these electric taxis come from

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Speaker 3: actual airlines themselves.

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Speaker 2: So flying taxis could be lean, green traffic avoiding machines,

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Speaker 2: at least that's what these transportation companies hope. But there

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Speaker 2: are a few big things standing in the way of liftoff,

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Speaker 2: including economics, timing, and red tape.

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Speaker 1: All that.

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Speaker 2: In a moment, flying taxis, they're the hot new frontier

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Speaker 2: in air transportation, and they're supposedly just around the corner.

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Speaker 2: Bloomberg reporter Angus Whitley, Again.

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Speaker 3: We're really approaching the reality here. We're seeing EHang launching

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Speaker 3: this year, We're going to see Jobian Archer launching next year.

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Speaker 2: For investors in the industry, this means payoff may finally

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Speaker 2: be near after years of waiting. Flying taxi companies started

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Speaker 2: to gain traction during a heady moment for the global economy.

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Speaker 2: At the time. There were a lot of investors with

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Speaker 2: a lot of money to throw around, and they were

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Speaker 2: willing to invest it with companies that required a lot

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Speaker 2: of upfront cash even if they didn't have the most

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Speaker 2: airtight business plan. Interest rates were near zero, unborrowing was

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Speaker 2: very cheap. These were the perfects to build a business

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Speaker 2: that was highly expensive and highly speculative like flying taxis.

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Speaker 3: But the days of cheap money are over. We're seeing

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Speaker 3: funding not drying up, but decreasing at.

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Speaker 2: Least with interest rates back up. Investors are getting more

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Speaker 2: risk averse, and that poses a challenge for flying taxi

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Speaker 2: companies who might have the technology down but will still

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Speaker 2: need to navigate logistical hurdles like aviation regulation, certification, liability.

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Speaker 3: And they're going to have to step up in terms

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Speaker 3: of producing these things. So they're going to have to

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Speaker 3: find a way of not just getting these things certified

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Speaker 3: but being produced at enough scale to make money. So

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Speaker 3: that this is a scale game. You need to have

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Speaker 3: these things produced at a level that we haven't really

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Speaker 3: seen since the Second World War. Archer, for instance, wants

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Speaker 3: to produce ultimately more aircraft a year than Boeing produced

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Speaker 3: last year.

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Speaker 2: A scale game, basically, flying tax companies need to find

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Speaker 2: a way to make enough of them to launch a

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Speaker 2: viable business. The more taxis they make, the cheaper the

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Speaker 2: cost for each new taxi. The cheaper the cost of

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Speaker 2: each taxi, the less they need to charge customers per ride,

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Speaker 2: and the less they charge per ride, the more people

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Speaker 2: who are likely to actually try this out.

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Speaker 3: It's certainly a moment and also I think in the

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Speaker 3: next few years we're going to see who is emerging

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Speaker 3: as winners and losers, and there will be people who

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Speaker 3: lose a lot of money along the line.

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Speaker 2: For any of these companies to have any chance at success,

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Speaker 2: Angus says, they'll need to win over regulators.

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Speaker 3: It is a global game. For instance, if you're a

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Speaker 3: flying taxi manufacturer and you have sign off from the FAA,

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Speaker 3: then you'll be able to access other markets around the

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Speaker 3: world as well, and jurisdictions like Australia. They take their

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Speaker 3: nod from the FAA in terms of certification and improving flights.

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Speaker 3: It's an important step to being certified and that will

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Speaker 3: open doors into other markets and we'll see the likes

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Speaker 3: of joby an Archer and e Hag enter other markets

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Speaker 3: as well, for example the Middle East and Europe. So

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Speaker 3: it's not a single country game.

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Speaker 2: Getting those rubber stamps is not going to happen overnight,

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Speaker 2: and that's part of the reason why years of investment

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Speaker 2: haven't paid off just yet. It's worth pointing out though,

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Speaker 2: that some regulatory environments will be easier to navigate than others.

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Speaker 2: That's in part why Colums e Hang Holding's test flight

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Speaker 2: was possible and why the e Hang taxi business could

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Speaker 2: take off in China sooner than competitors based elsewhere.

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Speaker 3: EHang already has a pilotless aircraft that can carry two

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Speaker 3: passengers certified by the regulator, so they're pushing ahead towards

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Speaker 3: commercial launch. By the end of this year, they would

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Speaker 3: have bragging rights over potentially emerging as the first autonomous

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Speaker 3: commercial flying taxi in the world. But it's interesting how

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Speaker 3: these things are being regulated. The China Civil Aviage and

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Speaker 3: regulator has cleared that it's partly because Chinese policy has

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Speaker 3: identified these kind of areas as a policy lever to

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Speaker 3: develop what they call a sort of low altitude economy,

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Speaker 3: other regulators are taking a bit more time. I'm not

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Speaker 3: suggesting that China's regulators necessarily less onerous when it comes

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Speaker 3: to certifying aircraft, but it's fair to say that power

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Speaker 3: is more centralized in China, which allows sort of policy

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Speaker 3: levers to be pulled at all levels to achieve a goal.

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Speaker 3: So if you look at Ehang's aircraft, it has a

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Speaker 3: certification from the regulator to fly and to go into

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Speaker 3: mass production. And once you get those kind of badges,

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Speaker 3: then orders start coming in and right on queue. We've

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Speaker 3: had local tourism entities order e Hag aircraft in their hundreds.

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Speaker 2: So anders, realistically, how soon could I ella flying taxi?

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Speaker 3: I think this is the picture they would like you

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Speaker 3: to see in your mind, walking out the door in

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Speaker 3: Haling a flying taxi. In reality, that is some way off.

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Speaker 3: I think that that is years away, but you could

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Speaker 3: next year. You could potentially take a trip to your

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Speaker 3: local vertaport as they call it, and take a flight

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Speaker 3: to the airport, perhaps not in the price of an uber,

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Speaker 3: but you know, as a special treat.

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Speaker 2: Of course, one person's treat is another person's terror. And

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Speaker 2: I wanted to know on which side of the spectrum

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Speaker 2: column had landed. After his two minute test ride.

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Speaker 1: It feels very stable, very secure. I think we're going

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Speaker 1: back down now. See that we're making no sense. I

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Speaker 1: actually did have another opportunity to take one, and that

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Speaker 1: was they offered us three different slots, and I felt

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Speaker 1: that after the first one, I had basically enjoy the experience,

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Speaker 1: had survived the experience, but I wasn't particularly keen or

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Speaker 1: anxious to jump in and go up again.

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Speaker 2: To be honest, this is the big take from Bloomberg News.

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Speaker 2: I'm Sarah Holder. This episode was produced by Jessica Beck,

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Speaker 2: Naomi and Audrianna Tapia. It was mixed by Rishi Bajakol

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Speaker 2: and fact checked by Eddie Dwan. It was edited by

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Speaker 2: Stacy Vennick Smith and Rebecca Greenfield. Our senior producers are

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Speaker 2: Kim Gettleson and Naomi Shaven, who also edited this episode.

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Speaker 2: Our senior editor is Elizabeth Hanso. Nicole beemsterbor is. Our

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Speaker 2: executive producer Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. If

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Speaker 2: you liked this episode, make sure to subscribe and review

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Speaker 2: The Big Take wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps

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Speaker 2: people find the show. Thanks for listening. We're off Monday

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Speaker 2: for the US holiday. We'll be back on Tuesday.