Honda has announced on Thursday that it is working to further expand its manufacturing portfolio to include electric VTOLs (vertical take-off and landing) vehicles for inter and intracity commutes.
Honda stated that it will leverage not only the lithium battery technology it's developed for its EV and PHEV vehicles for its eVTOL but also a gas turbine hybrid power unit to give the future aircraft enough range to handle regional inter-city flights as well.
The automaker said it foresees air taxis as a ubiquitous part of tomorrow's transportation landscape, seamlessly integrating with both autonomous ground vehicles and traditional airliners (though they could soon be flown by robots as well). Obviously, the program is still very much in the early research phase and will likely remain so until at least the second half of this decade. The company anticipates having prototype units available for testing and certification by the 2030s and a full commercial rollout sometime around 2040.
In a media briefing on Wednesday, Honda reps discussed the company's future robotics aspirations. The company envisions a future where people are unencumbered by space and time, where telepresence robots have visual and tactile acuity rivalling that of humans and tomorrow’s workers may simply don VR headsets and step into the body of an on-site humanoid robot rather than hopping on a plane to inspect remote factory floors or attend product demonstrations in person.
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