Hyundai’s Supernal air taxis could take off as early as 2028
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Hyundai’s Supernal showed off its latest design for an air taxi at the CES 2024 tech trade show in Las Vegas this week.
Air taxis and flying cars have been making a splash at CES for years now, but it’s encouraging to see a big company like Hyundai taking it seriously and moving forward with designs. I thought it was the most interesting thing I saw at CES this year.
The Supernal air taxi is an electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, or eVTOL. The S-A2 is a second-generation design.South Korea’s Hyundai unveiled its first S-A1 eVTOL program at CES in January 2020.
The aircraft will take four passengers. It can cruise at 120 miles per hour and it has eight rotors that can rotaet. It has four in the front of the wing and four in back to balance itself in a vertical take off. The engines will be quiet at 45 decibels during flight and 65 during take off or landing. That’s as quiet as a dishwasher. It can go from zero to 60 miles per hour during takeoff.
This year, the company showed off a VertiPort, or a concept for the places in Los angeles where you could catch an air taxi. As a division of Hyundai Motor Group, the company is not just developing an aircraft. It’s creating a mobility solution. Neil Marshall, head of manufacturing and program management at Supernal, told me it’s creating a mobility solution. The all-electric air taxi will have a range of 25 miles to 40 miles, with each trip taking just minutes instead of an hour in a car.
“It’s a new form of taxi, a new form of mobility,” Marshall said.
The trips will be short hops to places like downtown Los Angeles or Woodland Hills, long
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