The Man Behind Iconic Ferrari and Mini Designs Sets to Make Flying Cars Before 2025
All is set as Lilium, a German electric flying car start-up, is planning to hired designer Frank Stephenson to assist in bringing its science-fiction concept to reality.
While speaking with CNBC, Stephenson, talked about his vision for the flying vehicles and the ports that people would catch their flights. Stephenson, was the brain behind designs for cars like Ferrari F430, the new Mini and McLaren P1.
He is now heading up design at Lilium, which is creating an on-demand air taxi service and his vision is to create a vehicle that people won’t want to leave.
Stephenson,
“If you get in a taxi, watch how quickly people get off, they don’t waste time. You should walk away (from a Lilium jet) and the first thing you tell people is how much you enjoy the trip.”
Lilium, plans to create an app, just like that of Uber, where one can hail a flying car. It plans for next year, is to have its’ first manned flight and by the year 2025, it will have a fully-operational taxi service.
Ukrido, learnt that the flying taxi will be able to take-off and land vertically and wouldn’t need long runways like an airplane.
Stephenson, revealed that there will be entertainment systems on board and materials that can turn opaque and then transparent. Which mean you could change the floor of the flying taxi to transparent so to see down to the ground.
While describing how the stations will look, he said;
“I envision them as ports,” he said. “It depends on what you want to do. If you are in a city with a lot of infrastructure around, you won’t have this land close to you where there are dogs and kids around.What you will probably do, is to go to a building with a rooftop that will have a facility for a very small area, much smaller than a helicopter, with a landing pad.”
Lilium, still has a long way to go, as their technology will require some changes to aviation rules in many countries and will likely need to strike deals with governments to get its technology commercialized.
