Uber has picked Melbourne as the first city outside of the United States to test its flying taxis.
Test flights in the Australian city will begin next year with a goal of commercial ride-hailing (打车) services by 2023, it announced on Tuesday.
“We will see other Australian cities following soon after,” Susan Anderson, Uber's regional manager for Australia, said at the company's annual flying car conference in Washington DC.
Melbourne will be the third city to host trials of Uber's flying taxis, after Dallas, Texas, and Los Angeles, California, the electric taxis will be flown by a pilot.
Uber has partnered with NASA for its flying taxi program, named Elevate, and is one of several companies racing to make flying vehicles a reality. Other big names in the business include Rolls Royce and Boeing.
Even as it works on developing autonomous, electric flying vehicles–which are still several years away-Uber is taking its service to the skies in other ways.
The company will start a helicopter service on July 9, taking passengers from Manhattan to JFK Airport in eight minutes. It says customers who buy the roughly $200 ticket will save an hour of travel time during rush hour.
But the rollout (首次展示) of that service is now clouded by safety concerns about increased air traffic in cities, following two accidents in New York City in recent weeks.
A helicopter crashed onto the roof of a Manhattan building on June 10, killing the pilot. This deadly accident came weeks after a helicopter crash in the Hudson River. There were no deaths in that incident.
“For us, it shows the need to make safety the absolute base of everything we do,” said Eric Allison, Uber's head of Elevate.
Safety will also be a concern in Australia, where Uber has nearly 4 million regular customers for its ride-hailing service.
“We will continue to work with communities and governments to ensure that we create an urban aviation (飞行) ride-share network that is safe, quiet and green,” Anderson said.
【小题1】What can we learn about the flying taxis from the text?| A．Most flying taxis are self-driving. |
| B．The flying taxi was first tried out in Melbourne. |
| C．Flying taxis could be used in Australia in several years. |
| D．The flying taxis turned out to be a failure in America. |
| A．To further introduce NASA's cooperation with Uber. |
| B．To show the challenges facing the flying taxi service. |
| C．To explain why Uber's technology stands out. |
| D．To describe the development of Uber's flying services. |
| A．Safety. | B．Management. | C．Side effects. | D．Affordability. |
| A．Objective. | B．Skeptical. | C．Disapproving. | D．Optimistic. |
