美国国家公共电台 NPR Flying Taxis. Seriously?（在线收听）

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

Two words for you - flying taxis. That's right. In the not-so-distant future, you'll open your ride-hailing app. And next to car, SUV and bicycle, you'll see this option - flying car. At least, that's according to the optimists at the South by Southwest conference. Here's NPR's Aarti Shahani.

AARTI SHAHANI, BYLINE: You might be the passenger who hails a taxi and heads to the rooftop, where, at the helipad, your ride is waiting. It might look like a minivan with wings and four seats or more like a gigantic drone. Either way, it won't fly itself any time soon. One seat will be reserved for the driver pilot.

CAREY CANNON: If air taxis are going to be what everybody wants them to be, you know, in thousands at a city, for example, you won't be able to find enough conventional pilots.

SHAHANI: Carey Cannon, a chief engineer at Bell - we're in a crowded pavilion at South by Southwest, the annual tech, music, film convention in Austin. Cannon has set up a virtual reality simulation of what it feels like to drive one of these small, flying vehicles of the future.

CANNON: OK. I'll walk you through it a little bit. She's just about to go.

SHAHANI: He puts a headset on me and something like a joystick in my hand. I slip into a gamer chair, only I'm more than a gamer. I'm a trainer for Bell's computer software.

CANNON: All right. Now go ahead and roll the thumb wheel up to give it some power.

SHAHANI: How I and others drive will become data, training data for the artificial intelligence that'll take over much of the job. My VR flying taxi lifts off into the Las Vegas skyline.

CANNON: You're just following the green dots as they go.

SHAHANI: All right.

CANNON: (Laughter).

SHAHANI: Oh.

The dream of flying cars is at least as old as the automobile itself. Bell, which makes attack helicopters for the U.S. Navy, is working on this new project with another high-profile partner - Uber Technologies. Boeing and Airbus also have prototypes of these flying cars in the works. Uber has become the face of the aerial mobility movement as it has the most public campaign touting their work so far. Elon Musk says he'll get us to Mars. Uber says they'll get a millennial from San Francisco to San Jose in 15 minutes flat. And their timeline for this flying taxi that does not yet exist - 2023. I moderated a panel at South By.

By way of show of hands, how many of you believe it?

Half the audience buys that remarkable goal. When I asked if it'll happen within a decade...

Everyone, pretty much.

Jaiwon Shin with NASA, also an Uber partner, was on the panel. While he thinks Uber is being a touch bullish - he put the timeline further out to the mid-2020s - Shin gives his thesis for why it's close.

JAIWON SHIN: Convergence of many different technologies are maturing to the level that now aviation can benefit to put these things together.

SHAHANI: The batteries that power electric cars can power flight. Companies can stockpile and pull data and build artificial intelligence to take over air traffic control, manage the thousands of drones and taxis in the air. Also, his partner Uber is really well-connected to politicians and regulators. Shin says to move quickly, it'll take technologists and policymakers coordinating.

SHIN: If one segment is lagging behind, this is not going to happen.

SHAHANI: When we build the whiz-bangy (ph) future, it's good practice to pause and consider the downsides. That's what South by Southwest attendee Cheryl Garabet did when she stepped up to the mic. Right now, in major cities, people in bumper-to-bumper traffic or riding the subway have to see each other. With flying cars, the haves can escape to the air and leave the have-nots forgotten in their potholes.

CHERYL GARABET: I think of a very dystopian - all of us with money flying around, you know, looking down at the poor homeless, who have no options in that regard. Like, how can cities prepare so that there's not this awful dystopian future for all of us with flying vehicles?

SHAHANI: A strong dose of skepticism to balance the techno-optimism - while no flying taxi exists yet, Uber has dared to estimate the near-term cost. That San Francisco to San Jose trip - $43.

Aarti Shahani, NPR News, Austin.

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