LOS ANGELES—Uber’s head of product development Jeff Holden announced on Wednesday, November 8 that it would be adding Los Angeles to the list of cities where the company hopes to implement its upcoming flying taxi service, Elevate.
The plan to add Los Angeles to the company’s growing list of testing sites was announced at the Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal, a convention featuring a number of Fortune 500 companies and technology startups. Uber previously announced Dallas-Fort Worth and Dubai, as candidates to test the new Elevate service.
Elevate is projected to function much like standard Uber taxis. Passengers book a flight through the company’s mobile app and then rendezvous with their ride at a “skyport” (likely on the roof of a nearby building).The plan was first revealed by the company last year, but concrete details on the project have been few and far between. According toe reports, Uber has partnered with NASA to create a revolutionary air traffic control system to manage the aircraft.
Holden stated that Los Angeles was an obvious choice to be one of the first beneficiaries of Elevate.
“It’s one of the most congested cities in the world,” Holden said. “This type of approach allows us to very inexpensively deploy a mass transit method that actually doesn’t make traffic worse.”
