Flying Taxis ???

Late for work? Imagine skipping the subway and instead heading to your local “vertiport,” where you can hop into an aircraft the size of an SUV that runs on electricity and works pretty much like an elevator.

Get in, punch in your destination, and off you go. Alone.

It may sound like an episode of “The Jetsons,” but electric air taxis are a form of transportation that is coming to Dubai in just a few months. And investors hope American cities aren’t much far behind.

Insiders call the new breed of flying machine “e-VTOLs,” (pronounced “EE-VEE- talls”), an acronym for “electric vertical take off and landing.”

Exotic prototypes are being designed, built and flight-tested by companies ranging from Airbus to startups bankrolled by tech billionaires such as Google co-founder Larry Page.

$ $ $ $ $ $ $ $

Uber calculates that a 50-mile air taxi trip “might initially cost around $129 and eventually be as cheap as $20,” said Uber’s Goel, as ridesharing and higher demand for such rides make it easier to pay for e-VTOLs.

You can read the rest @
http://nypost.com/2017/04/01/soon-youll-be-able-to-go-to-work-in-a-flying-taxi/

This is a cool idea, but will it really cost only $20? And how in hell can these things be safe? As their numbers increase, so will the frequency of collisions.

I can think of two ways to keep the cost down - turn them into flying advertising platforms ... and also turn them into weaponized drones, which can be diverted on an as-needed basis to kill perps while they're taking you to work. Hell, for an extra charge they could even let the passenger(s) launch the missile !!!