Jakarta. Indonesia is in talks with Wisk Aero, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the American airplane manufacturer Boeing, to have air taxis in the new capital city Nusantara, although the discussions are still at a very early stage.

Indonesia wants its future capital, which lies in East Kalimantan, to be a smart city with flying cars. The Nusantara authority body has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with South Korean automotive giant Hyundai for cooperation on air taxis and will conduct the trial for the 5-passenger vehicle in July 2024.

The agency is also currently trying to get Wisk Aero to take part in making Nusantara’s flying taxi dream come true, according to Mohammed Ali Berawi, the deputy for green and digital transformation at the city’s authority body.

“We are exploring a cooperation on sky taxis with a US company, namely Boeing’s Wisk," Ali told reporters in Jakarta on Friday.

“But do keep in mind that we are still having initial discussions with Boeing. We visited the US, and we saw that they [Wisk Aero] were developing autonomous drones. So I would say that we are still at a very early stage with Boeing’s Wisk,” Ali said.

Later that day, Ali gave more details on the upcoming project with Wisk.

“We are planning to invite Wisk for a proof-of-concept,” Ali told the Jakarta Globe via text.

A proof-of-concept is a demonstration to show that a project is feasible. 

Wisk announced in late July that it had completed the world’s first public demonstration flight of a fully autonomous, electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL), fixed-wing air taxi. This marked Wisk’s first public demonstration of its 5th generation autonomous, eVTOL technology demonstrator (Cora).

The Nusantara Authority Body reported on Nov. 20 that it had garnered 305 letters of intent (LoIs) from interested investors. The project has obtained 7 LoIs from the US.