According to Sebastian Thrun, founder of Google’s self-driving team and the CEO of the self-flying vehicle startup Kitty Hawk, the reality and success of self-flying cars—electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing (eVTOL) vehicles—is more likely to become operational before self-driving cars.
He points out that the driving environment is more complex, considering the current diversity of vehicles and drivers, traffic signals, pedestrians, and other road hazards that will crowd the roads and highways.
As Thrun put it, “If you go a bit higher in the air then all the difficulties with not hitting stuff like children and bicycles and cars and so on just vanishes . . . Go above the buildings, go above the trees, like go where the helicopters are!”
Thrun added, “I personally don’t like the word ‘flying car,’ but it’s very catchy. The technical term is eVTOL. They can take off and land vertically…so that you don’t need an airport. And they fly very much like a regular plane.”