Airbus is building a high-speed flying taxi fleet so you never have to sit in traffic again

Airbus wants to make the flying car a reality.

The aircraft manufacturer is designing a flying taxi, named CityAirbus, that can fly itself to make commuting easier in traffic-heavy cities. Airbus wrote on its website that the flying taxi will be part of a fleet so you can summon it on your smartphone.

"Techies in Silicon Valley invent high-tech products every day. However, they still do not have a solution for one of their biggest problems: rush hour," Airbus wrote on its website announcing the project. "In response, Airbus Group experts are looking skywards to develop radical concepts that will relieve urban congestion."

The biggest challenge is creating the system that will allow the CityAirbus to fly autonomously, Airbus wrote on the website. Airbus said that the taxi will first be operated by a pilot, but will fly autonomously once federal regulations are put in place that allow that.

Airbus is also creating an electric, autonomous helicopter that can be used for commercial or personal use called Project Vahana. Airbus is aiming to conduct its first flight tests of the Vahana prototype vehicle by 2017 — a goal Rodin Lyasoff, the engineer leading the project, said sounds ambitious but is entirely feasible. "Many of the technologies needed, such as batteries, motors and avionics are most of the way there," he wrote on the website.

"I’m no big fan of Star Wars, but it’s not crazy to imagine that one day our big cities will have flying cars making their way along roads in the sky,” Airbus CEO Tom Enders said in the announcement. “In a not too distant future, we’ll use our smartphones to book a fully automated flying taxi that will land outside our front door – without any pilot.”