First flying taxis hit the New Zealand skies over the South Island

Since October; a mysterious flying object has been seen moving through the skies over the South Island of New Zealand. It looks like a cross between a small plane and a drone, with a series of small rotor blades along each wing that allow it to take off like a helicopter and then fly like a plane. To those on the ground, it has always been unclear whether there was a pilot abroad.

The airborne vehicle has been part of a series of stealth test flights by a company personally financed by Larry page, the cofounder of google. The company, known as Kitty hawk and run by Sebastian Thrun, who helped start google’s autonomous car unit as the director of google X, has been testing a new kind of fully electric, self piloting flying taxi.

The aircraft known as Cora, has a wingspan of 36 feet with a dozen rotors all powered by batteries. It can fly about 62 miles (99) km and carry two passengers. But before everyone gets excited, just know that virtually every prediction about how quickly air taxis would arrive has been wrong. Dubai said E hang would begin operating an autonomous flying taxi service last July. It never happened.