Xiaomi and Uber create a joint venture to produce future drone-taxis

Sooner or later, this was bound to happen - Xiaomi was aiming to release an unmanned drone taxi. And I chose

a win-win option for partnership - Uber,which already has a ready audience and infrastructure to launch such a service. Uber, in turn, will receive relatively low cost development of vehicles for its UberAIR (aka Uber Elevate) project. In the new joint venture, the name of which has not yet been announced, Xiaomi will be responsible for the development, production and maintenance of aircraft around the world. Uber will be integrating the new service on its platform and marketing based on processing a huge amount of existing data on the trips and expenses of its customers around the world.


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Already under construction for the production of unmanned dronesa new plant in Shenzhen (China), and the first city in which the UberAIR service will be launched will apparently be San Francisco. Although sources inside Xiaomi hint that the launch could be made simultaneously in China and the US. There is no information about the cost of the flight yet, but it is expected that (quote) “it will be lower than existing helicopter transportation services in megacities of the world due to the absence of a highly paid pilot.” A flight, for example, from San Francisco to downtown San Jose will take only 15 minutes, instead of the usual 2 hours by car. The official presentation of the basic model of the passenger drone is expected at the end of this year. From the characteristics it is still known that the drone will be double-seater, with a power reserve of 120 kilometers from one charge, and its flight altitude will be limited to 500 meters. Drone passengers will have access to free water and a Wi-Fi network with Internet access.

According to Jeff Holden, CPO(Chief Product Officer) of Uber Technology, the company estimates the current needs of the world market for such aircraft at the level of 1000 units per year. “If the Chinese partners do not let us down, we will be able to reach this level already in 2025.” Initially, UberAIR was planned as a service with manned aircraft (below the official promo for Uber in 2017), but the rapid development of technology made it possible to immediately start with unmanned aerotaxis.

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