The only problem was that none of them stayed in the air long enough, so the dream lay dormant. For the next few decades, most of the interest in flight focused on the jet engine, and personal aircraft design was again relegated to the stuff of fiction.įor the centuries that people had dreamed of personal flight, there were countless great ideas, thousands of drawings, and hundreds of planned attempts. Although there was interest and the prototype showed promise, the craft never went into production, as the standard helicopter proved more practical. The operator stood on the platform and steered by shifting weight. Navy, Hiller Aviation created the Hiller Flying Platform, a rotorcraft that was essentially a disk with a helicopter underneath. The short flight of 20 or 30 seconds, however, was not enough to make it viable for anything practical. In the 1950s, Bell Aerospace took the dream one step closer to reality with its unveiling of the jet belt, a small, low-thrust rocket that strapped to the operator’s back.

At the time, the concept of personal flight was still a thing of the imagination-epitomized in 1928 by the fictional character Buck Rogers, complete with his rocket belt. In the early days of manned flight, though, one idea persisted: the personal air vehicle. It lasted only 12 seconds, but initiated a rapid evolution in aircraft design, and within a few years there was an aircraft industry. In 1903, on a cold December morning in North Carolina, the Wright brothers made the dream a reality with the first manned flight. Simply put, the deal with Boeing allows Porsche to explore possibilities for an upscale, premium electric passenger drone that is consistent with the brand's image and values, as part of a larger effort to figure out how Porsche can continue to generate strong profits as mobility technology evolves.From the myth of Icarus, who flew too close to the Sun on wings made of wax, to the designs Leonardo da Vinci drew of flying machines that mirrored the wing patterns of birds, people have always dreamed of personal flight.

That limitation will be necessary to keep the skies from becoming overcrowded, they say.) (Note that the study's authors see passenger drones as a 'hub-to-hub' solution, moving between established stations, rather than 'end-to-end' like taxis. The study concluded that urban air mobility solutions could transport passengers more quickly and efficiently than ground transport and at lower cost, in time. The study estimated that commercial passenger drones will start to come into service around 2025 and that by 2035, there could be about 23,000 of these air taxis in service, creating a market worth roughly $32 billion.

Porsche Consulting took a close look at the potential market for electric passenger drones in a study last year. Porsche and VW are looking for ways to ensure that flow of profits continues as the auto industry moves toward electric, connected and autonomous vehicles over the next couple of decades.

Though Porsches accounted for just 2.6% of the passenger vehicles Volkswagen Group delivered in the first half of 2019, Porsche contributed 31.6% of its parent's operating income from passenger vehicles over that period. Makeup mogul: For Huda Kattan, beauty has become a $1.2 billion empireĪs auto investors know, Porsche's automotive sales volumes are small, but its profits aren't: They're a major component of parent Volkswagen AG's bottom line.

Vw prototype hover car