Autonomous taxi developer Wisk Aero is casting a wide net to identify geographic areas where its fully autonomous Gen 6 aircraft could potentially carry passengers.
That is according to chief executive Brian Yutko, who told reporters on 22 July that the company’s recently announced partnership with Skyports Infrastructure to explore air taxi operations in Australia’s South East Queensland region ahead of the 2032 Summer Olympics in Brisbane is part of broad effort to find the right integration opportunities.
“There’s hardly a region that you can name that we haven’t looked at to some extent and engaged in the communities and talked to the local airlines and other groups in those regions,” Yutko says. “We’re trying to be very measured in where we make commitments. Our strategy is not to blanket the earth with partnerships but to be really targeted and make sure that… when we start to put plans in place that they’re real.”
Boeing-backed Wisk is not necessarily a newcomer in the broader region. It has a long-standing presence in New Zealand, where it has conducted flight trials to demonstrate the potential for autonomous flight.
In February, the California-based start-up disclosed an agreement with the city of Sugar Land, Texas to develop autonomous air taxi services in the Houston area.
Wisk went bigger in June with a partnership exploring uncrewed electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) operations alongside Houston Airports to “identify and assess potential locations for the development of vertiport infrastructure” at George Bush Intercontinental airport, William P Hobby airport and Ellington airport.
“Connecting suburbs to Houston’s airports, business centres and prime tourist destinations through autonomous, sustainable air travel will create a new form of urban mobility and have tremendous economic and workforce impacts,” Yutko said at the time.
Prior to signaling its intention to develop an air taxi network in Houston, Wisk had officially expressed interest in just one other city in the USA – Long Beach, California.
Wisk is pursuing passenger-carrying, autonomous-but-supervised eVTOL flights with Gen 6 before the end of the decade. It is currently assembling its first full-scale prototype in Mountain View, California.
“The wing is in final assembly,” Yutko says of the prototype’s progress. “The fuselage is in assembly right now. We expect to mate the wing to the fuselage in the next month or so.”
The all-electric aircraft’s motors are currently in production and “going through a series of tests”, he adds. Wisk is also building its own avionics, including Gen 6’s flight-control system, and ramping up for a flight-test campaign it plans to launch this year.
“We’ve already started to do a bit of ground vibration testing on the wing to get ready for flight,” Yutko says.
