Tag: Transportation

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Joby Aviation wins $100M boost for flying cars

Joby air taxi
Concept art shows a possible design for Joby Aviation’s air taxi. (Joby Aviation Illustration)

California-based Joby Aviation says it has secured $100 million in Series B financing to take its all-electric passenger aircraft into pre-production and regulatory certification.

Intel Capital led the investment round, which also includes Singapore-based EDBI, JetBlue Technology Ventures, Toyota AI Ventures, Allen & Company AME Cloud Ventures, Ron Conway, Capricorn Investment Group, 8VC, Sky Dayton and Paul Sciarra. Joby also revealed a previously unsecured Series A round, led by Capricorn in 2016, which brings total funding to $130 million.

Founded by inventor JoeBen Bevirt, Joby is working to build a five-seat air taxi that will be 100 times quieter than conventional aircraft during takeoff and landing, and fly 150 miles on a charge. Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports that a prototype for the vehicle, nicknamed “Rachel,” is undergoing flight testing at Bevirt’s private airfield in Northern California.

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Boeing outperforms expectations, boosting stock

Boeing logo
Boeing, which has its corporate headquarters in Chicago, is reporting record results. (Boeing Photo)

The Boeing Co. today reported better-than-expected financial results for the fourth quarter of 2017 and a rosier-than-expected outlook for the year ahead, sending its share prices up 5 percent.

“Thanks to the dedicated efforts of employees throughout our company, Boeing delivered 2017 financial results that included record earnings, record cash flow, and record commercial aircraft deliveries,” Dennis Muilenburg, the company’s CEO, president and chairman, told journalists and analysts in a conference call.

Boeing’s performance was boosted by an upturn in the airline industry’s jet purchases as well as the recently enacted tax-cut bill, and the company projects a continuation of the positive trend in 2018.

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Erik Lindbergh unveils VerdeGo air taxi venture

VerdeGo Aero in flight
An artist’s conception shows VerdeGo Aero’s air taxi over Rio de Janeiro. (Verdego Aero Illustration)

A new entrant in the market for electric-powered air taxis is getting a boost from one of aviation’s oldest family names: Erik Lindbergh, the grandson of pioneering pilot Charles Lindbergh, is announcing the formation of a venture called VerdeGo Aero.

VerdeGo Aero is headquartered at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s MicaPlex incubator in Daytona, Fla., but the younger Lindbergh provides a strong Seattle-area connection. He’s lived on Bainbridge Island for decades, and serves on the board of directors for Raisbeck Aviation High School near Seattle’s Museum of Flight.

Lindbergh serves as president of VerdeGo, which is developing a hybrid-electric, vertical-takeoff-and-landing aircraft that can be flown autonomously or by a pilot.

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Why Amazon patented a self-destruct drone

Drone fragmentation
A diagram shows how a delivery drone might manage its own controlled fragmentation if it encounters problems during its trip. (Amazon Illustration via USPTO)

Most inventors look for ways to make their machines more robust, but Amazon has won a patent for delivery drones that fall apart more easily.

Why? For safety reasons.

The patent application, filed last year and published last week, lays out a concept that calls for an automated “fragmentation controller” to be included on the drone.

That controller, analogous to a flight controller, works out and updates a backup plan for breaking the drone apart if the flight is disrupted for some reason.

As the drone goes about its business, onboard systems and the drone fleet’s mission control center would be on the watch for potentially hazardous conditions, such as inclement weather or equipment malfunctions.

If the drone gets into a jam, the fragmentation controller could be activated to go through an optimized self-destruct sequence. Pieces of hardware would drop off or be ejected based on the terrain that’s surrounding the unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, when it gets into trouble.

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Elon Musk will bid to build Chicago transit ‘loop’

Hyperloop
Elon Musk’s original Hyperloop concept called for passengers to travel through pneumatic tubes in pods. (Tesla / SpaceX Illustration)

A loop to the Loop? It could happen: Billionaire Elon Musk says he’s willing to build an express transit system that links downtown Chicago with O’Hare International Airport.

Musk’s expression of interest came in response to Chicago’s “request for qualifications” relating to the system — which would be designed to cut travel times to 20 minutes or less, for a fare that costs less than a taxi or ride-hailing service. The Chicago Tribune said the fare could be in the range of $25 or more.

In a tweet, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said the express route would “give Chicagoans and visitors to our great city more options, faster travel time, and build on Chicago’s competitive advantage as a global hub of tourism, transportation and trade.”

No public funding would be provided. Instead, the concessionaire would have to finance the project and earn the money back from fares, advertising revenue and other sources.

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Pacific Hyperloop keeps chugging along

An artist’s concept shows a Hyperloop pod parked at a transit station. (Hyperloop One Illustration)

Pacific Hyperloop is moving ahead with its concept for tube travel between Seattle and Portland, in hopes of riding in the slipstream of the Pacific Northwest’s growing interest in ultra-high-speed transit.

“If Seattle and Portland were just 20 minutes apart, what could we accomplish together?” Charlie Swan, a University of Washington senior who’s Pacific Hyperloop’s co-founder and regional engagement manager, said on Saturday during the TEDxSeattle 2017 conference.

Swan said sending magnetically levitating pods between the two cities would help knit together the region, resulting in a “type of human interaction like the world has never seen before.”

But turning that vision into reality isn’t totally up to Pacific Hyperloop, which Swan says currently consists of a five-person team. Estimates suggest that it’d take somewhere between $24 billion and $42 billion to create an ultra-high-speed system connecting Seattle and Portland as well as Vancouver, B.C. to the north.

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Elon Musk unveils Tesla Semi and a new Roadster

Elon Musk with Tesla Semi and Roadster
Tesla CEO Elon Musk introduces the Semi truck and an updated Roadster. (Tesla via YouTube)

Tesla CEO Elon Musk rode in with revelations about his company’s all-electric Semi truck, but walked off with an even bigger surprise: a new version of the Tesla Roadster that breaks records for speed and range.

Tonight’s unveiling at Tesla’s design studio in Hawthorne, Calif., set a new standard for hype, with hundreds of fans cheering in the stands. But if Musk follows through on the promised specs, the Semi and the Roadster should set new standards for electric vehicles. And for vehicles, period.

“The point of doing this is just to give a hard-core smackdown to gasoline cars,” Musk said after showing off a red Roadster prototype. “Driving a gasoline sports car is going to feel like a steam engine with a side of quiche.”

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Boeing and Airbus duel for multibillion-dollar deals

Flydubai 737 MAX 8
Flydubai’s first 737 MAX 8 takes off from Boeing’s Seattle delivery center in July. (Boeing Photo)

There’s nothing like an international air show to bring out the multibillion-dollar sales, and the 2017 Dubai Airshow is setting a new standard.

Boeing’s big deal of the day was an agreement with flydubai, the hometown airline, for the purchase of up to 225 more 737 MAX jets for a list-price value of $27 billion. More than 50 of the first 175 planes will be 737 MAX 10s, the newest and largest variant in the MAX family.

“We are extremely honored that flydubai has selected to be an all-Boeing operator for many years to come,” Kevin McAllister, Boeing Commercial Airlines’ president and CEO, said today in a news release. Flydubai has already taken delivery of 63 737-800s and three 737 MAX 8 airplanes under the terms of previous deals.

Not to be outdone, Airbus announced a memorandum of understanding for the purchase of 430 airplanes in its A320neo family, valued at $49.5 billion at list prices.

The deal was struck with Phoenix-based Indigo Partners, a private equity firm that owns Denver-based Frontier Airlines and also backs Mexico’s Volaris airline, Hungary’s Wizz Air and Chile’s JetSmart.

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Alaska Airlines is ending flights to Cuba

Alaska flight to Havana
A Cuban flag is propped up on an seat in Alaska Airlines’ jet for the carrier’s inaugural flight to Havana in January 2017. (Alaska Airlines Photo via Twitter)

Less than a year after Alaska Airlines began daily flights to Cuba amid a burst of red-white-and-blue fanfare, the Seattle-based airline says it’ll end them in January.

Alaska said demand for the flights to Havana has faded after an initial burst of interest.

“Travel is about making connections, and we were honored to have played a role in helping people make personal connections by traveling between the U.S. and Cuba,” Andrew Harrison, chief commercial officer for Alaska Airlines, said today in a news release. “We continually evaluate every route we fly to ensure we have the right number of seats to match the number of people who want to go there.”

The Trump administration’s shift in policy toward Cuba was a contributing factor. Earlier this year, President Donald Trump tightened restrictions on business dealings, and last week, travel requirements were changed to rule out individual “people-to-people” educational travel to Cuba from the U.S.

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Flying car makes itself at home in Oregon

Vahana flying car
Airbus’ Vahana air taxi is set up for testing inside a hangar at the Pendleton Unmanned Aerial Systems Range Mission Control and Innovation Center in eastern Oregon. (Vahana Photo)

Call it a flying car, or an air taxi, or a pilotless passenger aircraft: Whatever it is, Airbus’ Vahana aircraft is ready for flight tests in eastern Oregon after making the trek from the California shop where it was created.

We reported that Vahana was in the Pacific Northwest last week, but in today’s Medium posting, project leader Zach Lovering shares a travelogue as well as pictures showing the journey from the Airbus-backed venture’s headquarters in Santa Clara, known as “The Nest,” to the Pendleton Unmanned Aerial Systems Range Mission Control and Innovation Center.

Flight tests are expected to begin within the next few weeks at Pendleton’s aerial test range, with the blessing of the Federal Aviation Administration. Vahana is designed to be an all-electric, vertical-takeoff-and-landing, autonomously controlled air vehicle with a battery range of 100 kilometers (62 miles). Once it enters service, passengers would use smartphone apps to book rides.

It’s one of many concepts for a new breed of aerial vehicle that are generically called “flying cars” or “air taxis,” even though most of them are nothing like the roadable, flyable vehicles that were dreamt of going back to the 1950s.

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