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AAM

What If: Remaking Movie Favorites with Urban Air Mobility

Dec 26, 2022

*UAM(Urban Air Mobility): Air mobility that transports passengers and cargo within urban skyways
**AAM(Advanced Air Mobility): Air mobility built upon the UAM concept by incorporating use cases not only in urban environments, but also between regional hubs

No doubt we’ve all played what if with our favorite movies, reimagining the plot or dreaming up scenes that take a novel twist or turn. A fateful encounter of the characters in the past or a deus ex machina that prevents tragedy or turns a situation around. What if, we might ask ourselves, these movies were remade in the age of future mobility, featuring Hyundai Motor Group’s Urban Air Mobility? What kind of stories would we tell then?

Urban Air Mobility, or UAM, is an air transportation system that provides a safe, convenient, and eco-friendly travel experience. Kia believes that UAM will soon change our mobility experience, by connecting the sky to the ground and overcoming barriers to travel.

Now let’s play some what if together using some of everyone’s favorite movies. What if UAM made an appearance in ‘The Devil Wears Prada’, ‘Before Sunrise’, and ‘La La Land’? How would it change things?

Andrea, the Invincible Assistant | The Devil Wears Prada

Still image from the film The Devil Wears Prada.
Naver Movie, https://movie.naver.com/

Smart but naïve, fresh journalism graduate Andrea Sachs (Anne Hathaway) eager to be a journalist, but very unexpectedly somehow she is hired to work as the assistant to Miranda Priestly, a ruthless fashion magazine exec.
To meet all of her boss’ impossible demands, Andrea needs to rush around New York City in a tight skirt and high heels.

Now let’s imagine how UAM would turn things around for Andrea!

With UAM, she wouldn’t have to rush around the city, wasting precious minutes in urban traffic. Instead, this clever girl would just head to the vertiport where the UAM takes off and lands. Flying the S-A1, the concept model created by Hyundai Motor Group, Andrea would literally be flying around completing her errands, at a maximum speed of 290km/h. The 20 minutes or more it would have taken by car, Andrea will spend less than 3 minutes going from Manhattan to East New York by UAM.

It’s unlikely that Miranda would compliment her, but we’re pretty sure she’d be impressed. Thanks to air mobility, Andrea would earn the nickname “invincible Andrea” among Miranda’s future assistants.

Romance in the Sky | Before Sunrise

Still image from the film Before Sunrise.
Naver Movie, https://movie.naver.com/

In Before Sunrise, Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) meet on a train in Europe, and these two strangers wind up spending a day in Vienna. They walk all around the city in deep conversations, sharing their most intimate feelings, before they eventually fall in love.

It’s fair to ask then, how would Urban Air Mobility have affected their day of romance?

Well, one thing that wouldn’t have been affected is their conversations; the rotors of the UAM are smaller and quieter than those of a helicopter. It uses rotors tailored to take off, mid-flight, and landing, and Hyundai aims to make the noise produced less than 65 decibels (dB), similar to the level of noise heard in an office. As a result, people on the street won't even notice vehicles flying above their heads. Nothing would get in the way of Jesse and Celine eventually falling in love.

What’s more, UAM houses Distributed Electric Propulsion technology to increase safety by operating multiple independent rotors. Even if one rotor fails, other rotors still operate to maintain altitude. Jesse and Celine would be safe on the streets as they wander the city. Or who knows, they may have even spent a romantic day in the sky?

No Traffic Jam Dance | La La Land

Still image from the film La La Land.
Naver Movie, https://movie.naver.com/

The opening scene of La La Land is one of the spectacular scenes in the movie. Unfortunately, in our new scenario, it would have to be completely reimagined.

The movie opens with a traffic jam on a Los Angeles freeway with hundreds of drivers tired of waiting. They jump out of their cars and start dancing their way to their destination.

With UAM, of course, Los Angeles-style congestion would become a thing of the past, and beyond transportation, the whole city environment would transform. When UAM becomes a reality and sky routes open up for transportation, all the roads, spaces, and structures formerly devoted to transport can now be repurposed. Just to get an idea of how much space that would create, if you sum up the total area of roads in San Francisco, it would be 6 times bigger than Golden Gate Park. That’s a lot of space that gets freed up for humans, not cars.

Also, UAM is battery-powered, which means it’s an eco-friendly air mobility solution. If La La Land is remade in the future, the opening scene would be people dancing on the vertiport surrounded by a cleaner environment!

Well, that was fun. Admittedly, introducing UAM into all three movies seems to have inched them closer to the sci-fi genre, but this future isn’t so far off and the changes that are coming are sure to be even better than the ones we’ve imagined. To that end, Hyundai Motor Group started a dedicated division to the UAM in 2019 and unveiled the UAM prototype S-A1 at CES 2020. The group aims for mass production and commercialization of AAM(Advanced Air Mobility) between 2028 and 2030. Keep your eye out for this innovative mobility solution and watch as all the things we imagine come to life!