A man took a personal electric flying machine from his home to his workplace. Is this the future of commuting?

Startup Jetson Aero says that it has completed the world’s first commute in an eVTOL—which is an electric vertical takeoff and landing machine—on 21 May. As part of that announcement, it documented co-founder Tomasz Patan making his way to his workplace from his home in the personal electric flying machine.

In the video, Patan made the flight from his home in Tuscany, Italy, to his office. The office itself is only about three miles away, and currently located at the home of co-founder and CEO Peter Ternström.

The Jetson One aircraft is described as a “coaxial octacopter” with a seat and a roll cage, as well as “enough batteries for 20 minutes of agile, buzzy flight at speeds up to 102 km/h”. Sure, it’s got a very short battery life for now, but it’s “designed to be flown for fun, with a joystick and a throttle”. Additionally, if you let go of the sticks, it’ll hover in place—so it’s not as stress-inducing as I would have imagined.

“We want to explore what is the practical stuff we can do with an eVTOL?… Can it replace a Vespa? Probably yes. But you can’t go to Ikea with it. You know, you can’t move pianos,” said Ternström.

It’s not very practical for you to jet across to work from your house right now. Besides the short battery life, where would you even fit that thing if you have it—especially if you live in a cramped up city? It seems only practical if you’re rich enough to have a lot of land and space for the Jetson Aero.

Still, deliveries for the aircraft for this year are already sold out. For 2023, the Aero has already taken more than 400 preorders for its Jetson One—priced at USD 92,000.

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