Supernal, part of Hyundai Motor Group, announced at CES 2024 a flying taxi called S-A2, which is a four-seat flying vehicle for passengers that runs on electricity and has the ability to take off and land vertically eVTOL.

The company expects this flying taxi to become available for commercial use in 2028; It will be a new means of transportation within cities, so it will start working this year on obtaining the licenses required by the US Federal Aviation Administration.

S-A2 Features

The flying vehicle has eight inclined propellers mounted on arms attached to the wing. This design allows it to take off and land vertically in place. It also has a distributed electric propulsion system and an oval cabin design that reduces air resistance. It is considered relatively quiet and can fly over cities because the noise it emits during flight is less than the noise of cars. The taxi flies at a speed of 190 km/h and its batteries enable it to fly 40 to 60 km.

Past and future

It is noteworthy that Hyundai had previously worked on an earlier version of the S-A1 and expected it to begin work in 2023 in cooperation with Uber, but that did not happen. What happened was that Ehang started commercial work on a flying taxi in China, which makes us expect that Hyundai will reach its desired goal this time, especially since the field has become very competitive between several players such as Archer, Joby, Vertical Aerospace and others.