Launched in 2010.
By Sreekanth A. Nair
Google co-founder Larry Page has found a start-up called Zee.Aero for developing personalized flying cars.
Bloomberg reported that Page funded the start-up and demanded to hide his involvement from the public.
“Page has personally funded Zee.Aero since its launch in 2010 while demanding that his involvement stays hidden from the public, according to 10 people with intimate knowledge of the company,” says the report.
Located at 2700 Broderick Way, Zee.Aero has 150 employees. It also has an airport hangar in Hollister where test runs are done using a pair of prototype aircraft and a manufacturing facility on NASA’s Ames Research Center campus.
The report further states that Zee.Aero is one among the projects of Page, who wants to build personalized air-travel cars using his wealth and intellect.
Page, who has spent more than $100 million for Zee.Aero has financed flying-car startup, Kitty Hawk, which is developing a competing design. Sebastian Thrun, who was spearheaded Google’s self-driving car program and founded Google X.
About a dozen companies are working on flying cars all over the world and the companies backed by Page are the leading ones that are expected to create tomorrow’s technology.
“Over the past five years, there have been these tremendous advances in the under-lying technology. What appears in the next 5 to 10 years will be incredible,” Mark Moore, a former advanced aircraft designer at NASA told Bloomberg.
The idea of flying cars is not of recent origin. In 1945, an engineer named Alexander Weygers had received a patent for a “¬discopter,” a vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) machine. But he couldn’t make it a reality.
Fifty years ago, Paul Moller, a professor emeritus at the University of California at Davis, had tested a prototype aircraft that could be parked in a garage. In 2009, Moore, a researcher at NASA had published a paper on a concept plane named Puffin that used electric motors.
In the same year, a group of engineers including JoeBen Bevirt, Ilan Kroo, and Larry Page had held meetings in Silicon Valley to develop electric planes. Later, Pake broke off and started Zee.Aero. Bevirt founded Joby Aviation and is hopeful of beating Zee.Aero. The company has made considerable advancement in the area. It has 5 acres of land near Santa Cruz, California.
Zee.Aero is also working on conventional designs at the Hollister Municipal Airport and is optimistic about coming up with a full-fledged personalized flying car. But they will have to face several technology problems, regulatory issues, and safety concerns before final victory.