Uber Unveils Skyport Designs for Flying Cars

With plans to launch its Uber Air air taxi services by 2023, Uber revealed the finalists in its competition to design Skyport Mobility Hubs. Uber’s eVTOLs will use these hubs to take off and land.

Eight architectural firms based in Los Angeles, Dallas, and Melbourne, Australia (all places where the first Uber Air services will be provided), submitted 16 designs. Each firm submitted a plan for new construction as well as structures retrofitted to existing buildings.

Uber Skyport Mobility Hubs

Finalists include the firms Beck, BOKA Powell, Corgan, Gensler, Humphreys & Partners Architects, Mithun, Pickard Chilton + ARUP, and SHoP.

Uber directed the firms to include space for electric bikes, scooters, electric vehicle charging facilities, and a connection to public transit. Designs were required to integrate with the community, minimize noise, use sustainable materials, and be energy efficient.

Los Angeles-based SHoP created a Skyport Mobility Hub called Arc. The firm describes it as a greenfield design capable of facilitating 72 eVTOL flights hourly. It integrates photovoltaics to offset the energy the hub will use.

The Skyloft Mobility Hub imagined by Pickard Chilton + Arub, a Melbourne-based architecture firm, uses renewal timber sources to enhance the facility with the beauty of wood. The nearly 40,000 square-foot facility includes space for retail and a lounge.

The Skyloft Mobility Hub design submitted by Dallas-based Corgan includes a grocery, sport courts, restaurants, and “entrepreneurship” facilities. The building includes a solar skin, flooring that harnesses kinetic energy, and heliostats to harvest and redirect sunlight under highways and the flight deck.