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The federal government is finally embracing drones. This week, the FAA endorsed 10 pilot projects that will see UAVs delivering medicine, inspecting infrastructure, monitoring the border, and more. “This tech is developing so rapidly that our country is reaching a tipping point,” said US secretary of transportation Elaine Chao when announcing the trials. Depending on the results, the little buzzers could become even more common than the mosquitos some of them are being programmed to help eradicate.
So it’s natural for drone operators to start thinking ahead to the next big leap: carrying people. Uber continued its efforts to cement itself at the center of this fledgling industry this week with its two-day Uber Elevate Summit. Nearly 1,000 attendees from academia, industry, and government gathered in Los Angeles’ Skirball Cultural Center to discuss how to make flying taxis a reality.
Among them was the FAA. Unlike the other participants, who were all gung-ho about the possibility of launching passenger-stuffed drones off the tops of tall buildings, the agency tasked with keeping American skies safe struck a more measured note. While saying that it would work on regulations and air traffic control systems, it stressed that, compared to smaller drones, the path to regulating human flight is likely to be different, harder, and longer.
Uber has made its reputation by being being quick and disruptive, often ignoring rules and regulations that would hold it back from deploying its cars. That approach has occasionally backfired—and helped cost founder Travis Kalanick his job—but it led Uber to a $72 billion valuation.
For flying vehicles, that strategy is not going to wash. In contrast to state officials eager to bring in high-tech jobs or city regulators who weren’t fast enough to deal with the aggressive not-quite-taxi competition, the FAA has serious power, and at the national level. Uber needs the FAA to certify the vehicles its partners are building and give it permission to operate in the tightly controlled airspace that it’s targeting. And the FAA doesn't brook revolution.
“We’re the safety regulators; we’re going to come at this from a safety perspective,” said the acting administrator of the FAA, Dan Elwell, in an onstage conversation with Uber’s head of product, Jeff Holden.
Uber wants to build a network of a new type of vehicle. Using batteries, motors, and multiple small propellers for lift, these vertical takeoff and landing aircraft should quieter, cheaper, and easier to fly than helicopters. Uber proposes a service that will depart from drone ports set atop tall buildings, flying customers across cities, starting in Los Angeles and Dallas–Fort Worth by the end of 2023.
Sounds neat. Just don’t expect it soon. “The pace of technological advancement in this industry is faster than anything we’ve had to deal with,” Elwell says. “When you put passengers on autonomous vehicles, as opposed to delivering a package, you introduce a much, much higher bar you need to get over.” To get past that, Uber is proposing having pilots onboard before eventually making them autonomous (hopefully).
Designing, building, and certifying a new passenger jet takes a decade and involves years of testing and proving to the FAA that everything’s incredibly reliable and safe. Uber is counting the months until it’s ready to start trials in 2020, but the company and its manufacturing partners have only shown prototypes.
Elwell says regulators aren’t going to be able to match industry pace, but they’re going to try: “You have more commitment, top to bottom, to bring these technologies to viable life than I’ve ever seen."
The most telling exchange between Elwell and Uber’s Holden came when an audience member asked how air traffic controllers might handle an exponential increase in flying machines. Holden described a scheme that involves carving out a corridor of airspace over Dallas–Fort Worth that commercial vehicles would avoid and within which Uber would manage traffic.
“What you just described is where we don’t want to go. You just described segregated airspace,” said Elwell, jokingly at first, offering to give Holden a number to try negotiating that with American Airlines. Then he got serious. “My hope is that we don’t have to do that.” He would rather see an integrated airspace, where everyone shares the skies with rules and technology to avoid one another, which he views as a better long-term solution.
Holden clarified that Uber does see integration as the eventual goal, but separating traffic might be a good first step, to get services up and running. The FAA chief wasn’t having it. “The crawling and walking—we try to do it ‘off Broadway,’ in places where you can solve the problem without creating too much disruption,” he replied. Note that those 10 drone pilot programs are in places like Reno, Nevada—not rubbing elbows with the fourth busiest airport in the world.
It’s a sobering reminder to Uber and the other enthusiastic companies at the summit that winning over the FAA means proving the safety and wisdom of every move they make. That’s why Uber is being extra cooperative. This week, it renewed a partnership with NASA to figure out the air traffic issues and see what effect small passenger aircraft would have on DFW’s air traffic at peak times. Here, it has found the one regulator it can’t ignore or steamroll on its way to takeoff.
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