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SeaBubbles’ Zero-Emission Flying Water Taxis

Laying down infrastructure for transportation is both expensive and time-consuming. But French startup SeaBubbles has devised a way for cities to introduce a new transportation system without having to dig tunnels, pave roads or lay track. Their Bubble vehicle is a flying water taxi that takes advantage of the unused space that many major world cities possess: Waterways. Because cities often started as trading posts and rivers were once the dominant transportation path, lots of cities have them.

Their solution is pretty clever. First off the Bubble features hydrofoils that lift it out of the water as soon as it hits 7.5 miles per hour. The resultant low hydrodynamic resistance allows the craft to reach “car speeds,” the company says, and will cost no more than a regular taxi.

Even better is that the battery-powered Bubble is not only zero-noise, but zero-emission—and part of a system that can actually feed power back into the grid. That’s due to the design of their docks, which harness power from three free sources: “While the solar tiles are capturing the sun energy, our underwater generators are catching the endless strength of the water and our wind turbines are catching the energy of the wind,” the company writes. “Those energies are kept into the existing batteries on the docks so they can easily be used to recharge the Bubbles when plugged and waiting for passengers.”

The plan is for riders to use their Citibike-like app to find the nearest available dock and Bubble, then zip off to their destination.

The four-passenger prototype Bubble, unveiled on French waters this month, is an open-air design; that’s fine for the St. Tropez location where the debut took place, but cities like New York, London, Portland, et cetera will obviously need to be enclosed.

SeaBubbles’ goal is to be in 50 cities around the world within the next seven years. Sadly, one city where that may not happen is Paris. While the company hails from France, famously plodding French bureaucracy has made progress difficult in the City of Lights. “[Company founder Alain Thebault] said it took two months for SeaBubbles to arrange a contract to lease two cars and a month for lawyers to register the company,” Reuters reports, “a job he said could have been done in a few hours in some other countries.” Additionally, Parisian authorities have refused to raise the speed limit on the Seine, which is currently so low that the Bubble cannot get enough speed to raise out of the water.

Hopefully authorities in other cities will be more enthusiastic. I for one would love to see this in New York, and with the impending shutdown of the East-River-spanning L-train, I bet thousands of other New Yorkers would too. And one huge plus of the Bubbles is that there is zero chance they will hit a pedestrian or cyclist. In New York City, according to 2016 statistics, 16 cyclists or pedestrians are hit by cars every day.