Elevate Summit Day 2 Recap

The Uber Elevate Summit 2018 has concluded at the Skirball Center in Los Angeles, CA – here’s everything that you should know from the second day of the conference about the flying car industry:

• Uber Announces Call for First International City to participate in UberAIR
• Celina Mikolajcak, Uber’s Director of Engineering, Energy Storage Systems, and Alan Dowdell, VP of Business Development, ChargePoint Discuss eVTOL Energy Systems (article here)
• Uber Partners with Gannet Fleming Architecture firm to develop first SkyPort Concept – VP Brian Smith Discusses the concept (article here)

Summit 2018 provided some valuable takeaways on the status of the flying car industry and the general sentiment of progress. Most notably, a number of manufacturers, including big OEM’s, released new eVTOL concepts at the conference – read our recap of Day 1 here for those big announcements.

In addition, policymakers and regulators (most notably the FAA) came together and fostered some intriguing conversation. Dan Elwell stated that he’d “absolutely ride in an autonomous aircraft” amid a conversation that was largely casual with slight resignation from manufacturers. Fortunately, the general consensus from this conversation was that Part 135 would not have to be completely rewritten to satisfy flying car operations in the US.

For a recap of the Summit and the full Summit 2018 schedule, visit Uber’s site here.