Last September, Larry Page's flying car company Kittyhawk, closed its doors. It was a stunning failure for what was once the vanguard of the eVTOLs (electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing aircraft) industry.
The company was started in 2015 and explored a range of concepts for eVTOLs over its lifespan. Backed by the bottomless pockets of Google's cofounder, and run by Sebastian Thrun, the "Godfather" of self-driving cars, it seemed that success was all but assured for Kittyhawk.
But internally, the company was constantly shifting gears and scrapping long-gestating plans. Frustrated with the lack of progress, Page eventually tried to leapfrog the entire eVTOL industry with more radical ideas that were supposed to dramatically reduce the cost of flying cars — from 3D printing an entire vehicle to swinging passengers between vehicles as they ran out of fuel. Ultimately, the mad scramble failed and the company shuttered in late 2022.
In our exclusive story on the rise and fall of Kittyhawk, we revealed several of the company's ideas for new flying cars. Some were wilder than others, including one a former employee referred to as a "reverse Boba Fett Slave I ship" — a reference to the legendary Star Wars villain's spacecraft. Another of the ideas, an autonomous taxi named Wisk, is still alive as part of a joint venture with Boeing.
Here's a walk through the halls of Kittyhawk's various flying-car experiments.