Will London have 'flying taxis' by 2024?
AKA: Why you should never believe anything you read in the Express
He believes he can fly
We’re not saying it’s ‘silly season’ in the media or anything, but a few days ago it was reported that in just two years time a battery-powered air taxi will be able to fly you from Heathrow to Charing Cross in 12 minutes, and all for the cost of a “high-end Uber fare”.
Here’s some actual footage of the announcement:
Actually this exciting bit of news was first reported in the Express and was then picked up by the estimable MyLondon (not hard, the two titles are part of the same group) where it was given the search engine-friendly (some might say ‘high-flown’) headline, London could have air taxis 'as cheap as Uber by 2024' that fly across the capital in 12 minutes.
The story becomes even more interesting when you read past the headline. Not only are these ‘air cabs’ able to travel up to 100 miles on a single charge and reach top speeds of 125mph, but the eventual aim is to make them “fully autonomous once the technology is approved and safe.” An air taxi without a pilot? It will be like the DLR but in the sky!
There is just one snag in all this: The story is complete garbage.
Penned by Express reporter Cyril Dixon (whose other recent scoops include Rosie Huntington-Whiteley faces anger from neighbours with plans to cut down trees and Covid forces new businessmen to start their own companies) the article seems to be a rehash of a press release from a company called Autonomous Flight Ltd, which has been peddling similar claims for around five years.
Here’s AF’s chairman and founder, Martin Warner doing a very low-budget Facebook Live with Sky News back in December 2017. In the video he discusses the concept of “electrical vertical takeoff and landing” (eVTOL) shuttles solving our mass transportation problems. It’s worth a watch both for the moment at 5:45 where somebody rings the reporter’s doorbell (no idea why they’re in her house, this was pre-lockdown) and also for the bit at around nine minutes where this exchange takes place:
Reporter: Tell us what stage you’re at with the actual development now. Because you have begun test flights but not with people inside?
Martin Warner: Correct…
No, Martin. Not correct. We know this, because Autonomous Flight’s website from early 2018 had a ‘Progress’ section, which stated that a ‘prototype test flight’ wasn’t going to happen until later that year. At around the same time the Standard was profiling Martin’s ambition to “transform air travel in the capital” and saying that the “tycoon” was “not far from unveiling the prototype of his first passenger drone.”
In February of 2019 a journalist from Aviation International News actually does some real reporting and discovers that AF is “lagging behind its original timetable,” noting that even though it had planned a flying prototype by the end of 2018, it was actually “just at the start of the prototype design and build process.”
In May of 2019 AF updated its website to say a prototype launch was still “coming soon” while the manned test flight had been rescheduled for Q2 of 2020.
It still said that in November of 2020.
Last year AF’s site got a bit of a revamp and the ‘progress’ section was removed to make way for the ‘Our Journey’ section, which contains a picture of Martin next to the statement “It’s not a question of if, but when...”. Now if only he would go ahead and answer that question.
None of this has stopped people giving AF money
In that same Aviation International article from 2019 it’s reported that AF has “very nearly finalised $25 million of funding,” but it looks like this too may have been a little optimistic. Industry site eVTOL news has a page dedicated to Autonomous Flight, which says that company’s only funding round was in April of 2021, and that was for £5 million, although they do say that this is to be “followed by an ongoing $25 million Series B funding round.”
But why stop at $25 million? Just last month UK Tech News “exclusively” revealed that the company was launching a Series C fund raising campaign “to secure an additional $100 million”. Wait, did Series B even happen? Where did that $25 million go if it did?
That round C opens this month “along with pre-orders for its electric aircraft,” (lol) which might go some way to explaining why AF is busy sending out press releases to journalists like Cyril Dixon of the Express. After all if you’re going to try and get your vapourware into the national press, you might as well go for the journalists least likely to question the hyperbolic press release that just landed in their inbox.
Remember that other recent article of Cyril’s we mentioned earlier? The one about a new breed of businessmen [sic] that are emerging from the pandemic? Well that article was based on a survey conducted by a company called Entrepreneur Seminar, a company that is run and owned by a “mentoring pioneer” who has been “dubbed the British Elon Musk”. His name? Martin Warner of course.
Flying taxis might still happen though
In September of last year Bloomberg reported that Hyundai was developing a vertical take-off and landing craft and had partnered with infrastructure firm Urban-Air Port to build “a network of flying-taxi hubs” in 65 cities, one of which is London (“situated somewhere in the West End retail district or City financial centre” apparently). And in June of last year the UK firm Vertical Aerospace partnered up with Virgin Atlantic and Heathrow airport to “deliver a Virgin Atlantic branded short haul eVTOL network” by 2025.
News bits
Late on Monday evening the Telegraph broke the news that Sadiq Khan is to “begin decriminalising Class B drugs in London”. According to the Telegraph, under-25s found with Class B drugs (that’s cannabis, ketamine and amphetamines) in Lewisham, Bexley and Greenwich (where the pilot scheme will be launched) will be “offered speeding course-style classes or counselling instead of arrest.”
This move has been on the cards since before the mayoral elections when Khan announced his intention to establish a London Drugs Commission “with particular focus on cannabis”. But, as we noted at the time, Khan can’t change the law, but he can direct the Met to reduce policing of low-level drug offences.
Talking of drugs: On Sunday the Met tweeted a video of ‘Taskforce Officers’ “doing drug swabs in Shoreditch”. The response has not been great, even though the Met followed up by explaining that the tests were carried out as a as part of a week of action “supporting women’s safety”.
I have a lot of questions. - is this even legal? - what are the grounds for swabbing people? - how are people selected? - what happens if someone tests positive but isn’t in possession? - who thought it was a good idea to tweet this?Taskforce Officers were out recently doing drug swabs in Shoreditch as part of a wider operation to ensure the night time economy is a safe place for all https://t.co/UtMbayPwpt
Metropolitan Police @metpoliceukThe most upsetting and depressing news this week was that the two stabbings that happened within an hour of each other last Thursday made 2021 London’s worst ever year for teenage homicides.
It looks like London may have reached “peak Omicron”. According to the latest data cases and hospitalisations have stabilised and even fallen during the past fortnight. On Monday the Guardian quoted a senior clinical research associate at the University of Cambridge’s MRC epidemiology unit as saying “We would guess, based on what case numbers are doing in London, that the peak in hospital admissions should be this week, and nationally, maybe a week later,”
If you’re planning on commuting anywhere over the next week you might want to double check your route. Southern trains have announced that the routes which were due to resume on January 4 will be closed until the 10th:
Over Christmas the Metro reported on the results of some Freedom of Information requests it had made into the sale of “historic public assets” by London’s councils. The paper concludes that some of the Grade I and Grade II-listed landmarks that could have been used “as youth centres or much-needed housing” have instead been sold off for “very, very low” sums.
Vice has put together an ‘alternative’ tour guide for the British Museum, which delves into some of the museum’s disputed artefacts “as told by people from their homelands”:
While we’re on the subject of dreadful London news reporting, we should acknowledge the fact that MyLondon is apparently “the most visited online London news title with 31 million monthly page views, according to Ipsos Iris September data.” We won’t let this annoy us too much though. In fact, it only makes us more determined to call them out when they publish utter dross.
