Google co-founder Larry Page’s Kitty Hawk firm testing ‘Cora’ flying taxi

A company backed by a Google co-founder has unveiled a new flying car called Cora. Although it shares a name with Eastenders character Cora Cross, the airborne motor is unlikely to have been inspired by a British soap. It was dreamed up by Kitty Hawk, a Silicon Valley startup supported by Larry Page, CEO of Google’s parent company Alphabet. Now Page’s firm has revealed that work on a flying ‘air taxi’ designed to offer passengers the ‘first step towards everyday flight’ is underway in New Zealand. It is designed to take off and land vertically like a helicopter, without needing a runway.


‘Cora began as a dream,’ it wrote. ‘An air taxi so personal and so simple it could take the trips you make every day, the ones that define our lives, and bring them to the sky. ‘After eight years of tackling some of the biggest challenges in aviation, that dream is one step closer.’ ‘Cora isn’t just about flying. Cora is about the time you could save soaring over traffic. The people you could visit. The moments that move you.’ The air taxi will combine self-flying software with expert human supervision, to reassure nervous customers.

Larry’s pretty Chitty is not to only flying car in the offing. Last year Volvo’s parent company Geely bought a flying car start-up called Terrafugia, which aims to sell its first cars in 2019. The Terrafugia TF-X is partially electric-powered, has helicopter-style rotors, and predicted to cost around the price of a luxury car once it is in full production. The ‘street legal plane’ will carry two travellers and has a range of 400 miles, and can reach a height of up to 10,000 feet.


Story Metro.co.uk