After the success of the search engine, Google founder Larry Page tried his hand at a dream project: flying cars.
Kittyhawk, however, failed to produce a marketable vehicle — and the project crash-landed in September 2022, 12 years after its inception.
Read the full story of Kittyhawk here – from shaky test flights and downright fantastic ideas straight out of a Willy Wonka horror show.
Posting projects was a tradition at Kittyhawk, Google co-founder Larry Page’s mysterious flying car startup. But for many employees, this project was the most painful.
In April 2022, the CEO, Sebastian Thrun, rallied employees to announce that the company was officially ending its most promising project to date: an air taxi called the Heaviside, which Thrun himself would fly on its maiden voyage. The employees who put their heart and soul into this project were dismayed. Kittyhawk, which Page had invested hundreds of millions of dollars in, was once the vanguard of a new and exciting industry. The company suddenly felt disoriented.