Audi and Airbus Ground Their eVTOL Partnership Plans

In a statement to Automotive News Europe, Audi announced it had suspended work on its Pop.Up eVTOL air taxi it had been developing with Airbus.

“At present, we are working on a new direction for our urban air mobility activities and have not yet made a decision regarding potential future products,” the company said.

All work on the Pop.Up air taxi, developed by its Italdesign subsidiary has been halted.

The Pop.Up consisted of a passenger capsule that would sit on top of a self-driving electric car chassis. The pod could then be connected to a flight module at a heliport.

Pop.Up’s Trajectory

Pop.Up flew successfully with a scale version this past November during Drone Week in Amsterdam.

At the time, Audi board member Bernd Martens said that Audi wanted to have “a fully flightworthy prototype by the end of next year.”

The company also planned to test air taxis in its home city of Ingolstadt, Germany.

Now, citing the hurdles it faced, the company said, “We believe it will be a very long time before an air taxi can be serially produced that does not require passengers to change vehicles. In the modular concept of Pop.Up, we were working on a solution with the highest complexity.”