After going through a series of rough patches following the controversy surrounding its app, the American cab-aggregator service Uber is back in business and this time it aims to fly high (literally!). The company is planning to raise a fleet of ‘flying taxis’ and deploying them in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas and Dubai by 2020.
In the centre of Uber’s ambitious plan are small electric flying cars that would feature the VTOL technology, which means that they would be able to take off and land vertically instead of the traditional air-crafts that require a long runway to operate.
Uber is partnering with various companies including VTOL, Bell Helicopter, Aurora, Pipistrel, Mooney, Embraer and ChargePoint to help it in its ambitious project.
According to a Reuters report, Uber has also partnered with the Dubai government and that it would conduct flight test in Dubai as part of the World Expo 2020.
Recent times have witnessed the company being in the limelight for all the wrong reason. Earlier this week, a report suggesting that back in 2015, Apple had threatened Uber to kick it out of its App Store for tracking its users even after they had deleted the app hit the news. However, the company had denied all such claims saying it was a method used by the company to prevent fraudsters from installing the app onto a stolen phone.
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Meanwhile, in March this year, the ‘Greyball’ fiasco marred the company’s image. The taxi-provider faced a lot of flak after a report suggesting that the company was using grey-balling to evade authorities and snoop on their private data surfaced online. The company later took a U-turn saying that it was using the technique only to prevent its partners from physical harm.
