The urban air taxi developer Kittyhawk has announced it is winding down.

Launched by self-driving car pioneer Sebastian Thrun and backed by Google co-founder Larry Page, Kittyhawk was working on an all-electric aircraft that could autonomously take off, fly and land without any human pilot onboard, on a small landing pad only slightly larger than its wingspan.

In a post on LinkedIn, the company said: “We have made the decision to wind down Kittyhawk. We’re still working on the details of what’s next.”

From Flyer to Wisk

Founded in 2010, the company carried out several years of research and development before Kittyhawk began revealing some of the projects that it had been working on in 2017.

This included Flyer, an ultralight eVTOL which was retired in 2020 after more than 25,000 successful test flights.

In 2019, Kittyhawk and Boeing created a joint venture (Wisk) to further develop a Kittyhawk-designed aircraft named Cora.

Reacting to the announcement that Kittyhawk was ceasing operations, Boeing said it would not affect the compony’s commitment to Wisk.
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