Audi And Airbus's Flying Taxi Project Apparently Takes A Step Back

The luxury car brand Audi is now focusing on developing its automotive technology that can make flying cars realistic with all of its effort. However, the idea still has a long journey to be achieved, despite the car brand’s huge effort to generate a self-made flying taxi of the future with Italdesign and to make a partnership with Airbus. 

In a recent interview, Audi is looking to realign urban transportation for air mobility, yet come up with possible business solutions. As an alternative to the progress, the brand instead takes into consideration cooperation with other subunits which are under Volkswagen's management.

The company also emphasized on the proper understanding of the concept PopUp Next, which is not a terminology in production. This concept should be understood merely as a start for autonomous air vehicles. PopUp Next covers an extremely complex array of manufacturing technologies, which have been and are a practical research area.

Audi is fully aware that it will need an extremely long period to make mass production become a reality for these vehicles. Better yet, this is the time for their reconsideration. 

The decision was made after Audi's peer, Porsche (also a part of the Volkswagen) has partnered with Boeing Airlines to develop the premium air transportation segment. For Audi, the partnership will bring about practical and mutual benefits, and strengthen the future of air taxis.

In 2018 at the Geneva Motor Show, the air taxi PopUp Next, a combination of drones and cars was publicly launched. It was introduced to be able to travel flexibly between the air and the ground with amazing speed. Audi was also one step ahead with a letter explaining its intention to test PopUp in Ingolstadt. Last November recorded the first successful steps of the scale model tested for flight

The future of air travel in this way seems very promising. As evidenced by the announcement in cooperation with Boeing, Porsche has mentioned an internal study stating the growing popularity of air transportation since 2025. At the same time, Audi continues to stay connected to inform other project outcomes as well as share necessary information.