A French yachtsman turned a boat design he used to break the world sailing record in 2009 into a fast ‘flying taxi’ that can take you where you want to go, not through roads, but through water.
According to Reuters, Alain Thebault named his invention SeaBubbles. The vehicle is 100 percent electric and charges while people are getting in and out.
The vehicle preserves its battery by rising out of the water on legs at speed.
According to Euronews, the docks create energy using the power of the water, the sun and the wind. When reaching 12 km/h (7.5 mph), the Bubble starts flying above the water.
seabubbles flying taxi paris. (Reuters)
You can order SeaBubbles via a mobile application, just like Uber.
A prototype of Thebault’s vehicle cruised along Paris’s Seine river ahead of the VivaTech conference where he hopes to sell the first models.
But the Bubble only has a chance of running in Paris if the authorities raise the Seine speed limit so it can go fast enough to rise out of the water, a request they have rejected so far.
Paris’s mayor Anne Hidalgo took a trip on the uncanny vehicle last June, however she did not comment on whether she thought the Paris speed limit should be changed.
Emmanuel Macron, France’s pro-business president who wants to create a “startup nation”, even championed the idea when he was finance minister.
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