Skip to main content

Futuristic flying ambulances might be coming to the skies of New York City

Meet CityHawk - Hydrogen Powered Flying Taxi

Picture the scene. A person has collapsed outside. Paramedics have arrived and they’re helping a doctor assess their patient. Suddenly there’s a buzzing sound from the sky and, as they look upward, a futuristic, drone-like flying ambulance bursts through the low cloud cover and begins to descend to the streets below.

Recommended Videos

Science fiction? Not for long if a new deal struck by the Israeli company Urban Aeronautics lives up its promise. The firm has had four of its Cormorant CityHawk VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) flying vehicles ordered by the New York-based air ambulance nonprofit Hatzolah Air. That makes Hatzolah Air the first paying customer of Urban Aeronautics.

The two organizations will now work together to prepare the vehicles for use by emergency medical services — with the necessary space for a patient and companion, plus a couple of EMS professionals, pilot, and assorted emergency medical equipment. This is helped by the fact that the Cormorant CityHawk VTOL reportedly has around 20 to 30% more cabin space than a helicopter.

Air ambulance
Urban Aeronautics

“The CityHawk VTOL has two ducted fans, contained within an aircraft the size of a van,” Nimrod Golan-Yanay, CEO of Urban Aeronautics, told Digital Trends. “The combination of a relatively small external footprint, high payload, and a large and spacy cabin allows it to truly operate safely from anywhere within the city, near obstacles, and in the vicinity of people, with the peace of mind and safety of a car.”

Piloting of the jet fuel-powered vehicle (with a hydrogen-fueled version planned for the future) is similar to piloting a  helicopter, although Golan-Yanay said it boasts simpler controls and enhanced stability. “This will result in agility and quickness that creates new opportunities for urban first responders,” he said.

There are still no shortage of regulatory hurdles to cross before this use of the VTOL technology takes off, both figuratively and literally. But if all goes according to plan, these could be the new face of ambulances just a few years from now.

Golan-Yanay said that this air ambulance news could serve as a proof-of-concept for the further use of VTOLs in urban environments. “Together with Hatzolah Air as our EMS sales representatives, we definitely plan to deploy more EMS CityHawks worldwide,” he noted.

Luke Dormehl
I'm a UK-based tech writer covering Cool Tech at Digital Trends. I've also written for Fast Company, Wired, the Guardian…
Google just gave vision to AI, but it’s still not available for everyone
Gemini Live App on the Galaxy S25 Ultra broadcast to a TV showing the Gemini app with the camera feature open

Google has just officially announced the roll out of a powerful Gemini AI feature that means the intelligence can now see.

This started in March as Google began to show off Gemini Live, but it's now become more widely available.

Read more
This modular Pebble and Apple Watch underdog just smashed funding goals
UNA Watch

Both the Pebble Watch and Apple Watch are due some fierce competition as a new modular brand, UNA, is gaining some serous backing and excitement.

The UNA Watch is the creation of a Scottish company that wants to give everyone modular control of smartwatch upgrades and repairs.

Read more
Tesla, Warner Bros. dodge some claims in ‘Blade Runner 2049’ lawsuit, copyright battle continues
Tesla Cybercab at night

Tesla and Warner Bros. scored a partial legal victory as a federal judge dismissed several claims in a lawsuit filed by Alcon Entertainment, a production company behind the 2017 sci-fi movie Blade Runner 2049, Reuters reports.
The lawsuit accused the two companies of using imagery from the film to promote Tesla’s autonomous Cybercab vehicle at an event hosted by Tesla CEO Elon Musk at Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) Studios in Hollywood in October of last year.
U.S. District Judge George Wu indicated he was inclined to dismiss Alcon’s allegations that Tesla and Warner Bros. violated trademark law, according to Reuters. Specifically, the judge said Musk only referenced the original Blade Runner movie at the event, and noted that Tesla and Alcon are not competitors.
"Tesla and Musk are looking to sell cars," Reuters quoted Wu as saying. "Plaintiff is plainly not in that line of business."
Wu also dismissed most of Alcon's claims against Warner Bros., the distributor of the Blade Runner franchise.
However, the judge allowed Alcon to continue its copyright infringement claims against Tesla for its alleged use of AI-generated images mimicking scenes from Blade Runner 2049 without permission.
Alcan says that just hours before the Cybercab event, it had turned down a request from Tesla and WBD to use “an icononic still image” from the movie.
In the lawsuit, Alcon explained its decision by saying that “any prudent brand considering any Tesla partnership has to take Musk’s massively amplified, highly politicized, capricious and arbitrary behavior, which sometimes veers into hate speech, into account.”
Alcon further said it did not want Blade Runner 2049 “to be affiliated with Musk, Tesla, or any Musk company, for all of these reasons.”
But according to Alcon, Tesla went ahead with feeding images from Blade Runner 2049 into an AI image generator to yield a still image that appeared on screen for 10 seconds during the Cybercab event. With the image featured in the background, Musk directly referenced Blade Runner.
Alcon also said that Musk’s reference to Blade Runner 2049 was not a coincidence as the movie features a “strikingly designed, artificially intelligent, fully autonomous car.”

Read more