google co-founder's autonomous cora air taxi sparks buzz with its first flight

unknown to some, larry page, the co-founder of google, has been working on his passion project — an autonomous personal aircraft. recently, he has achieved major headway with his autonomous air taxi, cora, which just had its first official flight in new zealand. the craft has the likeness to various existing personal aircraft; it seems to splice together small plane characteristics with those of a copter or drone, thus providing the vehicle with a wide range of controlled movement and fast speeds. you simply get in, punch in the directions and cora will do all the rest.

image © richard lord 2018

cora is fully electronic. it was built by kitty hawk—a silicon valley start up backed by google co-founder and alphabet CEO larry page. cora’s designers boast the vehicle’s zero emissions as one of the many reasons they believe it will cure our car problems; the other reason naturally being that you can simply glide over traffic jams and cut your commute in half. wave goodbye to four wheel taxis, cora is designed to effortlessly land in small areas, a feature inconceivable to most flying crafts but helicopters which require many years of training and many gallons of gas to fly. cora is also more safe, due to its many anti gravity propellors, acting as various fail safes and the fact that it can glide due to its wings should those have any problems. 

images courtesy cora

constructing cora

the finished project

cora splices together elements of a plane and a drone

the cora on the runway