Electric Air Taxi takes flight

Anyone who drives across any of the bridges between Saint Pete and Tampa probably wishes their car could do this, right? Just take off and fly over all of that traffic. Well, that sci-fi is looks like sci-fi, but it may be a little closer. A massive step taken today right here in Tampa Bay and Fox 13's Ariel Placencia has a closer look at these flying cars. Well if you were out driving around this morning you looked up in the sky and you saw one of these no you weren't hallucinating it's an electric air taxi how cool now let me show you the inside of this this can fit a pilot and four passengers very very cool and imagine taking this across the bay and how fast it would be. Hop on right onto the waterfront into your aircraft and 10 minutes later, you're right here. No bridge traffic. No parking garage and it isn't just a vision it's something that is happening. They're called EVTOLs or electric vertical takeoff and landing. Basically that means they can go straight up without a runway and then fly forward like an airplane. As part of Friday's demonstration, aircraft by both Joby Aviation Thank you very much. and Beta Technologies took off from Albert Whitted Airport in St. Pete and landed at Signature Aviation at Tampa International Airport. And because they're electric, Joby Aviation says the aircraft isn't loud. Just ask the pilot. All you hear in the cockpit is the wind noise rushing. Rushing around the inside, so it's very, very quiet. Friday's demonstration flight also paid homage to Tony Janus, who flew the exact same route between St. Pete and Tampa back in 1914, marking the world's first commercial airline flight. The governor spoke at the landing site Friday morning, saying this is a major milestone in Florida's efforts to transform how people and goods move throughout the state. You think about some areas you would want to avoid by car. You could have a situation where these are operating almost like a ride share, cargo delivery, medical transportation, emergency response missions. Right now, Joby officials say they're working through the FAA certification process. So perhaps by the second half of next year, they said they could potentially start practicing routes like what we saw today. And when it does eventually open up to the public? We're going to try a crawl, walk, run approach. So we're going to start with relatively few aircraft and build up over time. Price point at the start might be a little bit higher, but what we want is over time as we get to scale, offer a product that's comparable to like a premium ride share. So who knows, we could be seeing, and I'd say hearing, but maybe not because they're so quiet, these in our area pretty soon. In Tampa, Ariel Placencia, I'll send it back to you.