Austin and other Texas cities could soon be on the vanguard of aviation, with innovative electric aircraft jetting off their runways.
What's happening: The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) was selected by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) this week for one of eight pilot projects nationally, with regional flights linking Dallas, Austin and San Antonio — with Houston planned next.
Partners on the Texas project include the companies Archer, BETA, Joby and Wisk.
The big picture: The U.S. is competing against China to lead in advanced air mobility.
How it works: Most of the U.S. projects involve the use of electric aircraft that can take off or land vertically — imagine giant, low-flying electric drones carrying passengers or cargo that take off like helicopters and fly horizontally like traditional planes.
Some will also include electric or hybrid planes that take off and land conventionally or require only a short runway.
Zoom in: Operations in Texas cities could start later this year, Adam Hammons, a spokesperson with TxDOT, tells Axios.
Initially, in a phase that could last three months, TxDOT will use traditional helicopters and fixed-wing planes alongside electric aircraft to fly the planned routes. These flights will carry equipment and perform tests without carrying commercial passengers, Hammons said.
In a second phase, operations will scale to medical and cargo logistics, such as transporting critical medical supplies or organs between rural facilities and urban medical centers in Austin and San Antonio.
Ultimately, after the electric aircraft receive final federal certifications, the network will scale — in two to three years — to commercial passenger "air taxi" flights, Hammons says.
What they're saying: "Rather than isolated tests in a single city, TxDOT is building the infrastructure to handle the transition between urban, rural and state airspace," Hammons tells Axios.
The bottom line: Together, the U.S. projects will create one of the largest real-world testing environments for next-generation aircraft in existence, the FAA said in a statement.
