Kitty Hawk abandons its Flyer project, lays off dozens

Secretive Larry Page-backed “flying car” startup Kitty Hawk has pulled the plug on its Flyer electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, and will lay off most of the 70-person team that was working on it, as TechCrunch first reported.

“We have learned what we needed from [Flyer] — things like vehicle design and testing, manufacturing aircraft, and most of all, how humans would experience eVTOL,” Alex Roetter, the president of the Flyer project, and Sebastian Thrun, Kitty Hawk’s CEO, wrote in a blog post. “We are proud to have built the first electrically-powered VTOL aircraft in the world flown by non-pilots. Just as with our earlier Cora aircraft, Flyer is clearly a milestone in the history of Kitty Hawk and eVTOL...

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