Kitty Hawk, the electric aircraft moonshot backed by Larry Page, is shutting down

The electric aviation startup founded and led by the "godfather of self- driving cars" Sebastian Thrun is shutting down.

The company said on social media that it was winding down.

We have decided to end Kittyhawk. We're still working on the details of what's next.

We have made the decision to wind down Kittyhawk. We're still working on the details of what's next.

— Kittyhawk (@kittyhawkcorp) September 21, 2022

Attempts to get in touch with a company spokesman have been unsuccessful. If more information is given, the article will be updated.

Kitty Hawk was founded with the help of Page. A friend of Page's who co-founded the X moonshot factory was tapped to lead the company.

Until the middle of the decade when Kitty Hawk introduced its Flyer aircraft, the company was mostly hidden from the public. A single-seater, all-electric, vertical take-off and landing vehicle was the company's first moonshot.

More than 25,000 successful flights were conducted with Kitty Hawk's fleet. The program was shut down in June 2020 to make room for Heaviside, an electric aircraft that could fly and land autonomously. Heaviside was in development since 2015, but it wasn't made public until the conference.

Sebastian Thrun of Kitty Hawk is in San Francisco for a conference. The image is credited to TechCrunch.

Kitty Hawk has at least one other public project called Cora, a two person, autonomously flying taxi. The company was spun off into a venture with Boeing. Wisk is a joint venture that is trying to develop and sell air taxis. Boeing invested $450 million into Wisk.

The only mission of Kitty Hawk was Heaviside, which was another larger version of the plane. Kitty Hawk's third act is named after Oliver Heaviside.

While the program was going on, other competitors popped up and made progress. The tension between the lead physicist and electrical engineer of the program added to the pressure. Lind was fired in May of 2021.

In Ohio, Kitty Hawk demonstrated a beyond-visual-line-of- sight flight. The FAA, the Air Force and SkyVision were involved in the demonstration. The company had built more than a dozen H2 vehicles.

The mission was not clear by the year 2022. According to sources, Kitty Hawk was working on a new project. The company was mentioned on its website. Kitty Hawk said it was working on a small, light and quiet air taxi that could be remotely piloted.