In November 2022, Dominique Lazarski stood among a small crowd of people on the Pontoise airfield near Paris, watching a flying taxi trace wide circles in a clear blue sky, after taking off for the first time from a working vertiport in France. Airborne, the vehicle looked like a giant quadcopter; its rotors spinning rapidly to keep a small taxi cab airborne. Yet Lazarski, who lives in the city part time, was only thinking about the whirring sound coming from above her head. “I thought it was quite, quite noisy,” she remembers.
What Lazarski—who is president of ADERA, a group that campaigns against increased air traffic at Paris-Beauvais Airport, north of the city—had witnessed was the beginning of a campaign to get Parisians excited about the prospect of flying taxis in the skies above the Summer Olympics.
“The development of low-altitude aviation for urban air mobility is an adventure full of promise; for employment, for the environment and for the lives of Ile-de-France residents,” pledged Valérie Pécresse, president of the regional council of Ile-de-France, the region which includes Paris, that same year. The first airline ticket might have been issued in Florida, she added, but the first flying taxi would take off from French soil. “The Olympics are an incredible opportunity and showcase to launch this project.”
Yet after years of planning, the project failed to convince Parisian politicians, the public and safety officials that the technology was ready for widespread use at The Summer Olympics. A sole flying taxi ascended over Versailles for five minutes on the last day of The Olympics, but it had no passengers. The promise of tourists traveling over Paris in flying taxis failed to materialize and instead the technology suffered a high-profile set-back. Volocopter declined WIRED’s request for an on-record comment about what went wrong.
Flying cars have been mythologized by sci-fi, featuring in movies from the Fifth Element to Blade Runner as a symbol of the future. But what happened in Paris shows the barriers that stand between the technology and its modern-day debut. Their supporters have yet to find a way to effectively sell them to the public or even decide what—or who—exactly flying taxis are for.
The idea of Olympic tourists soaring over Paris in flying taxis was initially greeted with enthusiasm. “Paris Dreams of Flying Taxis for 2024” read a 2021 headline in news outlet Les Echos.
By 2023, a year after the demo in Pontoise, the two companies behind the project, German flying taxi developer Volocopter and French airport operator ADP, remained bullish. The noise wasn’t going to be a problem, they said, claiming the flying taxis would not be audible from the ground when flown at an altitude of around 500 meters. Edward Arkwright, ADP’s deputy CEO, acknowledged in June 2023 there would be challenges ahead. But he insisted: “All lights are green for us to be there in the summer of 2024”. ADP did not reply to a request to comment.
Six months before the Olympic Opening Ceremony, Dirk Hoke, CEO of Volocopter, was still hopeful. “[We’re] making people aware that this is not science fiction,” he told WIRED in February, touting the flying taxi as a sustainable, safe and quiet mode of transport that would become normal in just a few years. “It works and it starts this year.”
Flights on Volocopter’s VoloCity model would be free-of-charge and initially three routes were planned across Paris. Even as those plans were made public, Hoke had yet to travel in one of his own vehicles. “I would love to,” he said, “but so far, according to the regulation, only test pilots are allowed.” Still, his tone was optimistic. “We will hopefully start flying in July and then start also with passengers, probably in August.”
But just two months later, Hoke started expressing doubts in German media. After being rejected for a state loan, the company was facing the prospect of insolvency “in the foreseeable future,” if its shareholders would not agree to more financing, he told newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.
At the same time, backlash to the project was mounting, with critics complaining the VoloCity (which could only transport one passenger at a time) was more akin to a private plane than any form of public transport. “We don’t need them,” says Lazarski. She believes the flying taxis would create visual and noise pollution in the skies above Paris, without giving its residents anything back. “It’s not mass transportation,” she says, claiming the vehicles would only be used by the most privileged. “They’re for business people.”
Lazarski was not alone in her concerns. Seventeen thousand people have signed a petition so far, calling for the project to be scrapped and politicians in charge of Paris also joined the backlash—pitting politicians in the capital against the wider region and government.
Dan Lert, deputy mayor in charge of the green transition called the VoloCity an “absurd gadget” that will “only benefit a few ultra rich people.” His colleague David Belliard, deputy mayor in charge of mobility, echoed that sentiment. “It is useless, it is anti-ecological, it is very expensive,” he said in July.
Volocopter, however, defended its product as affordable. “We strongly believe that when we go into the hundreds and thousands of these vehicles, that we can easily reach a price per equivalent seat which is only a bit higher than a taxi on the street,” Hoke said in February.
Yet other flying taxi executives have acknowledged that getting to that point will take time and first there will be a period where these vehicles cater to the wealthy. “A lot of the initial use cases will be first and business class passengers connecting with flights,” Michael Cervenka, chief technology officer of UK-based flying taxi company Vertical Aerospace, said earlier this year.
By late July, it was clear Volocopter’s plans for the Paris Olympics were being scaled back, even as the company claimed its immediate money problems had been solved. “It’s a technological advance that could be of use,” transport minister, Patrice Vergriete, insisted, acknowledging the flying taxis might not be able to welcome any passengers in time for the Olympics. Publicly, Volocopter was careful not to credit the public backlash with the setback, instead blaming an American supplier “not able to provide what it had promised,” and its failure to win approval from the European Union Aviation Safety Authority to operate commercially.
Lazarski does not consider the failure so far of flying taxis a victory. “It’s more relief,” she says. But for her, the battle is not over. As vice president of UFCNA, the French union against aircraft nuisance, Lazarksi is involved in a legal challenge against plans to operate a vertiport on the river Seine for flying taxis to take off and land from central Paris. That launchpad has already secured permission from the government to operate until December. The race for the Olympics may be over. But the dream of flying taxis over Paris is not dead.
Source : Wired
