It’s one of the logistical questions hanging over the Paris Olympics, two weeks from the Opening Ceremony: will there be flying taxis?
At last year’s Paris Air Show, airports conglomerate Groupe ADP announced that its partnership with the German start-up Volocopter was on track to offer “electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft services in time for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games”.
They said Paris would likely be the first city in the world to offer this and expressed support from the French civil aviation authority.
Since then, Volocopter has played down expectations for commercial flights, but maintained hope for "demonstration" flights for some celebrities, athletes and journalists.
With two weeks to go, the project has not yet received French aviation authority’s approval to fly these demonstration routes, let alone commercial ones.
This week, there was another snag.
The Paris town hall sued to block the creation of a landing pad on a floating barge on the river Seine.
The barge has already been built and was meant to be one of the five take-off and landing zones, with the other four in Issy-les-Moulineaux, Versailles and two airports north of Paris.
If the town hall succeeds in blocking this barge, it would be a major defeat for the project, which hoped to see the first air taxi flights to and from a major metropolitan centre.
With suburban flights only, the project would still be the first of its kind in Europe, but in China, the number of similar demonstrations has multiplied.
Start-ups there are ahead of the game – EHang for instance has flown passengers in Guangzhou and Hefei, while AutoFlight has flown between Shenzen and Zhuhai, albeit over the Pearl River estuary and not over the city.
Political tug-of-war
On Tuesday, Transport Minister Patrice Vergriete of President Emmanuel Macron’s party, formerly from the Socialist Party, approved the creation of the heliport on the Seine, boosting hopes for the project’s approval.
The next day, the Paris city council, which has a left-wing majority, immediately adopted a proposal by Communist Party officials to block the move.
The city official in charge of the environment, the Green Party's Dan Lert, called it an “ecological aberration for the benefit of the ultra-rich” and a "democratic scandal" that an outgoing government would try and "force" through the project.
Valérie Pécresse, the right-wing president of the Ile-de-France region, which comprises Paris, accused what she called the “anti-progress left” of causing trouble.
Amid the bunfight, there are real concerns on noise and emissions.
The flying taxis are billed as being “quiet”, although up close they're anything but.
As for emissions, even though they’re electric, they’re estimated to be more carbon intensive than cars – even modern petrol ones – but with less emissions than regular helicopters.
Find about more about why we're obsessed with flying cars on this week's Tech 24.
