The SureFly two-person drone taxi will make its maiden flight at CES 2018

By Luke Dormehl Published May 12, 2019

Ohio-based company Workhorse has announced that its innovative SureFly octocopter, essentially a human-sized drone for up to two people, is set to make its manned maiden voyage on January 8 in Las Vegas, prior to next year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

“CES is the perfect venue to show the SureFly,” Mike Dektas, a media spokesperson for Workhorse, told Digital Trends. “It is the premiere tech show in the world, and SureFly is a great example of how tech has entered the VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) world.”

Recommended Videos

The futuristic carbon fiber SureFly vehicle was first shown off earlier this year at the Paris Air Show. Following its (weather permitting) voyage at CES, it will be on display at the event. It can carry up to 400 pounds, driven by eight separate propellers, and is powered by a hybrid system combining gas combustion engine and parallel battery pack.

Early versions of the craft will reportedly be user piloted, but an autonomous version isn’t out of the question for the future. In the air, it is able to cruise a maximum of 70 miles (with a maximum speed of 70 miles per hour) on a single tank of fuel — although we happen to think it’s pretty nifty on the ground as well, where its propeller arms fold down to allow the SuperFly to fit comfortably into a regular car garage.

“The SureFly reinvents the helicopter,” Dektas continued. “Pilots like that the SureFly is flown using a joystick, much the same as flying a drone — simple and easy to pilot.”

Deltas said that the octocopter wasn’t designed with a particular customer in mind, but that, “we feel the market will tell us who the customers for this are.” That might include precision agriculture, emergency responders, city commuters, military, cargo carrier, and others.

Personally, we just like the idea of arriving at the office via giant drone taxi. At an estimated retail cost of $200,000 when it hopefully goes on sale by late 2019, we’d essentially be working for free for several years to pay it off — but it would totally be worth it for the look on our colleagues’ faces!

Former Contributor

I'm a UK-based tech writer covering Cool Tech at Digital Trends. I've also written for Fast Company, Wired, the Guardian…

Topics

Emerging Tech

OpenAI admits it needs to rethink what happens when AI goes rogue

As increasingly capable AI agents move beyond controlled tests, OpenAI is confronting a difficult question: When does strange model behavior become an incident the public deserves to know about?

OpenAI has spent plenty of time explaining how it plans to stop increasingly capable AI agents from doing things they shouldn't. Now, the company says it needs to get better at telling everyone when those things have already happened. The admission follows reports of another previously undisclosed incident involving OpenAI's AI agents, this time affecting a German-language programming wiki. According to Reuters, agents made more than 15,000 unauthorized edits to DseWiki, using the site to communicate and share ways to bypass restrictions, cheat on tasks, and avoid detection.

OpenAI has now acknowledged what it calls the "wiki incident" and says the episode exposed a larger problem with how AI companies disclose unexpected model behavior. The company says it is developing a framework for deciding when and how to make incidents involving misaligned AI public.

Emerging Tech

AI has a safety problem nobody is ready for

AI safety efforts are ramping up, but their protections don’t work equally well everywhere. In developing countries, language gaps and cultural blind spots can turn everyday AI mistakes into serious real-world consequences.

AI companies are spending an enormous amount of time worrying about what happens when their models become too capable. OpenAI even took the unusual step of temporarily pausing training on a model last month over safety concerns, as the industry grapples with risks ranging from autonomous behavior to increasingly sophisticated cyber capabilities.

But there’s another AI safety problem that is much easier to overlook: the protections already being built into these systems don’t necessarily work equally well for everyone. A new report from Rest of World highlights how AI safety efforts remain heavily centered around the needs of wealthier, English-speaking countries. That can leave people in parts of Asia, Africa, and other developing regions dealing with problems as basic and potentially dangerous as a chatbot misunderstanding their language.

Branded Content

The IFA 2026 Publisher Award Winners Bring Fresh Ideas to Everyday Tech

From Smarter Entry to Screen-Free Wellness, These IFA 2026 Winners Do Things Differently

IFA 2026 Publisher Awards

IFA is the kind of event where almost every corner promises the next big thing in tech. Some ideas are ambitious, others are surprisingly simple, and a few make you wonder why nobody thought of them sooner. But among hundreds of new products, the most memorable ones usually have something more going for them than novelty alone.

This year’s IFA Publisher Award winners are a good example. They span everything from smart entry and personal wellness to coffee, floor care, and big-screen entertainment. What connects them is how they take technology in interesting new directions while keeping its purpose grounded in how people actually use it.