Hyundai is showing off a four-passenger, electric, vertical take off and landing drone at CES 2024.
Drones meant to carry humans are a yearly sight at CES and none of them seem to have offered a viable alternative to gliding like planes can or autorotating like helicopters can in case of engine failure, so none of them have hit the market.
A version of seemingly the same drone was already shown off by Hyundai four years ago at CES 2020, so this is a refinement rather than a brand new announcement, but Hyundai is now saying that they expect it to be ready by 2028.
At the moment they’re calling it the S-A2 concept and they claim it can fly at 120mph at an altitude of 1500 feet, but it will deplete its battery in 25 to 40 miles, so depending on location it may not even get a full round trip to a city’s airport out of the range. It also claims to be quieter than a helicopter, but given that there are helicopters out in the real world with ranges of 600 miles and speeds of 300mph, they’re probably not too worried.