Uber partners with NASA for its Elevate flying car project, aims to launch aerial taxis in Los Angeles by 2020
Los Angeles will be the third test city, and NASA will provide logistical support — Uber's “flying car” project Elevate came whizzing back into view today with a number …
Context & Ripple Effects
The NASA tie-up lands just nine months after Uber hired veteran NASA engineer Mark Moore to lead aviation engineering, giving the Elevate project an institutional partner alongside its internal team. Los Angeles becomes the third test city, following Uber's earlier ground experiment with Airbus supplying helicopters for a chopper trial in early 2016.
In hindsight this is the high-water mark of Uber building air mobility in-house: the project later produced a working VTOL prototype unveiled in May 2018 and a Paris research center, before Uber sold Elevate outright to Joby Aviation in 2020 while keeping a $75M equity stake — a stake that resurfaces in 2025 with plans to add Blade helicopter rides through Joby.
First-order effects
- NASA commits logistical support to Uber's aerial taxi program, and Los Angeles joins the test-city roster with a stated 2020 launch target — putting city planners and regulators on notice now.
Second-order effects
- Rivals like Airbus, already testing helicopter supply for Uber's chopper service, face pressure to decide whether to build their own eVTOL programs or become suppliers to someone else's.
Third-order effects
- The eventual path — Uber selling Elevate to Joby and returning in 2025 as a marketplace layer for Joby-operated Blade flights — suggests ride-hailing platforms structurally exit vehicle manufacturing and monetize demand instead, with aerospace partners carrying the capital risk.
The trend: Urban air mobility is consolidating around a split between platform companies that own the customer relationship and aircraft makers that own the vehicles — a split Uber itself helped define by building, then divesting, Elevate.