He has reportedly been funding Zee.Aero and Kitty Hawk, two rival companies based in California’s Silicon Valley. The report goes into much more detail about the two companies and the history behind the exploration of this flying vehicle concept, so be sure to give it a good read if you’re curious.
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And Zee.Aero and Kitty Hawk are hardly alone in the quest to build flying cars.
It is not clear what the flying distance is, the speed, cost, or other technical specifications of the Zee.Aero and Kitty Hawk prototypes.
Page initially restricted the Zee.Aero crew to the first floor, retaining the second floor for a man cave worthy of a multibillionaire: bedroom, bathroom, expensive paintings, a treadmill-like climbing wall, and one of SpaceX’s first rocket engines – a gift from his pal Musk.
The future seems a little closer with reports of Zee.Aero testing one of its prototypes at a Hollister, Calif., airport, but there’s no word on whether flying cars will land anytime soon.
Google and Zee.Aero did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“Over the past five years, there have been these tremendous advances in the underlying technology”, Mark Moore, an aeronautical engineer who designs advanced aircraft at NASA, told Bloomberg.
Not so, a spokesperson countered, insisting that Zee.Aero was “not affiliated with” Google.
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Sources report that Google’s co-founder is funding these aircraft manufacturers out of personal ambition and has allegedly even retained a single office in one of them where the employees refer to him as “GUS”. There’s not much information on what exactly the start-ups are working on, aside from whatever we can glean from Zee. Despite requiring movement in three dimensions, the challenges of a self-flying AI are apparently more straightforward than for a auto, with experts suggesting that plane-pods that pilot themselves are likely to arrive before cars that are fully autonomous do. Now, with the brightest minds and the deepest pockets focused on flying cars, the only question that matter is: Will it ever happen? “What appears in the next 5 to 10 years will be incredible”.
