On the first day of its second annual Elevate Summit, Uber unveiled a series of new advancements and partnerships that are helping launch the world’s first urban aviation network.

Six months after announcing Los Angeles would be one of the first U.S. cities to launch uberAIR, the company reinforced its partnerships with key manufacturers and technology companies, working together towards a goal of launching flight demonstrations in 2020 and commercial trips by 2023.
“Today, Uber’s annual Elevate Summit took flight to showcase the aviation industry’s advancements on many fronts needed to make uberAIR a reality by 2023,” said Jeff Holden, Uber’s chief product officer. “This includes multiple vehicle designs, new battery technology, manufacturing improvements and the ‘operating system’ that will enable safe, precise, environmentally friendly operations at scale and allow cities to radically improve their transit networks. This gargantuan effort to ‘push a button and get a flight’ can only be accomplished through close partnership across the public and private sectors, and that’s exactly what Elevate Summits are all about.”
Uber will not manufacture the vehicles but will work with industry leaders to produce vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft that will use the uberAIR network. Some of the key announcements from the first day of the summit include: