At this week’s Uber Elevate Summit in Washington DC, Safran and Uber presented a cabin design for an eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing) aircraft that is intended to create a consistent passenger experience for airborne Uber passengers, regardless of the vehicle manufacturer. Safran applied its expertise in aircraft cabin design to create the concept cabin.
Named the Mission Driven Cabin, the concept is the result of months of intensive design and passenger experience studies, hosted at Safran Cabin’s Design and Innovation Studio located in Huntington Beach, California, as well as consultations with multiple vehicle OEMs and regulatory bodies.
The complete, integrated cabin interior is designed to be adaptable to the varying envelopes of different OEM vehicle designs, while still offering a familiar feel for passengers as Uber seeks to make urban air travel simple, safe and accessible to all. Designed around the mission of turning a typical 90-minute car ride into a 15-minute flight, the future vehicle will allow passengers to quickly travel point-to-point in crowded urban environments by using vertical space.
Scott Savian, EVP of Safran Cabin’s Design and Innovation Studio explained, “Through the process with Uber, we had six full-scale mockups, with multiple iterations in each one, looking at the seats, liners and window positioning. We don’t want any excess weight or cost, but the mission also requires safety, a comfortable user experience, and a seamlessness of all the user interactions. So while the cabin may be minimal in some ways, it’s absolutely purpose built to the mission.”
