France to debut air taxis in 2024
Heralds revolution in green transport
LE BOURGET, France — Just a dot on the horizon at first, the bug-like and surprisingly quiet electrically powered craft buzzes over Paris — treating its doubtless awestruck passenger to privileged vistas of the Eiffel Tower and the city’s signature zinc-grey rooftops before landing with a gentle downward hover. If all goes to plan, could a new page in aviation history be written?
After years of dreamy and occasionally credible talk of skies filled with flying, nonpolluting electric taxis, the aviation industry is preparing to deliver a future that it says is just around the corner.
Capitalizing on its moment in the global spotlight, the Paris region is planning for a small fleet of electric flying taxis to operate on multiple routes when it hosts the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games next summer. Unless aviation regulators in China beat Paris to the punch by greenlighting a pilotless taxi for two passengers that’s under development there, the French capital’s prospective operator — Volocopter of Germany — could be the first to fly taxis commercially if European regulators give their OK.
Volocopter CEO Dirk Hoke, a former top executive at aerospace giant Airbus, has a VIP in mind as his hoped-for first Parisian passenger — none other than French President Emmanuel Macron.
“That would be super amazing,” Hoke said, speaking this week at the Paris Air Show, where he and other developers of electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft — or eVTOLs for short — competed with industry heavyweights for attention.
“He believes in the innovation of urban air mobility," Hoke said of Macron. "That would be a strong sign for Europe to see the president flying.”
But with Macron aboard or not, those pioneering first flights would be just small steps for the nascent industry that has giant leaps to make before flying taxis are muscling out competitors on the ground.
The limited power of battery technology restricts the range and number of paying passengers they can carry, so eVTOL trips are likely to be short and not cheap at the outset.
And while the vision of simply beating city traffic by zooming over it is enticing, it also is dependent on advances in airspace management. In the coming decade, manufacturers of eVTOLs aim to unfurl fleets in cities and on more niche routes for luxury passengers, including the French Riviera. But they need technological leaps so flying taxis don’t crash into each other and all the other things already congesting the skies — or expected to take to them — in large numbers, including millions of drones.
Developers point out that ride-hailing apps and e-scooters also used to strike many customers as outlandish. And as with those technologies, some are betting that early adopters of flying taxis will prompt others to try them, too.
“It will be a total new experience for the people,” said Hoke, Volocopter’s CEO. “I think we are at the edge of the next revolution.”