Uber Aims to Start Flying-Taxi Services in Melbourne in 2023

Test flights of Uber Air will start in the Australian city from 2020.

Angus Whitley

12 Jun 2019, 09:09 AM IST

Uber Aims to Start Flying-Taxi Services in Melbourne in 2023

A scaled model of Uber Technologies Inc.’s eCRM-003, an electric vertical take-off and landing jet, is displayed during the Uber Elevated Asia Pacific Expo event in Tokyo, Japan. (Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) -- Uber Technologies Inc. plans to start electric flying-taxi services in Melbourne from 2023, the ride-sharing company’s first overseas market for the program.

Test flights of Uber Air, as the company calls it, will start in the Australian city from 2020, Uber said in a statement Wednesday. Melbourne joins Dallas and Los Angeles as pilot locations for the services.

Uber Trying to Steer Its Vision of Flying Cars Though Regulators

According to the company’s description of Uber Air, passengers will be able to catch flights from building tops in battery-powered aircraft that land and take off like conventional helicopters.

To contact the reporter on this story: Angus Whitley in Sydney at awhitley1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Young-Sam Cho at ycho2@bloomberg.net, Peter Vercoe