Six months before the opening ceremony, Volocopter CEO Dirk Hoke was still hopeful.[We’re] “We want to make 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 transportation that could become mainstream within a few years. “It works, and it’s starting this year.”
Flights on the Volocopter VoloCity model would be free, and initially three routes through Paris were planned. But 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, the regulations only allow test pilots.” Still, his tone was optimistic. “We'll start flying hopefully in July and then with passengers, probably in August.”
But just two months later, Hoke began to express doubts in the German media. After a government loan was rejected, the company faced the prospect of insolvency “in the near future” if shareholders did not agree to more financing, he told the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.
At the same time, backlash against the project was mounting, with critics complaining that the VoloCity (which could carry only one passenger at a time) looked more like a private jet than any form of public transportation. “We don’t need them,” says Lazarski. She believes the flying taxis would add visual and noise pollution to the skies above Paris, without providing residents with anything in return. “They’re not mass transit,” she says, arguing that the vehicles would only be used by the most privileged. “They’re for business people.”
Lazarski was not alone in his concerns. Seventeen thousand people have so far signed a petition calling for the project to be scrapped, and politicians responsible for Paris have also joined the backlash, pitting politicians in the capital against the rest of the region and the government.
Dan Lert, deputy mayor of Paris responsible for the green transition, called VoloCity an “absurd gadget” that “will only benefit a few ultra-rich people.” His colleague David Belliard, deputy mayor responsible for mobility, agreed. “It’s useless, it’s anti-ecological, it’s very expensive,” he said in July.
Volocopter, however, defended its product as affordable. “We strongly believe that when we deploy hundreds and thousands of these vehicles, we can easily achieve a price per equivalent seat that is only slightly higher than a taxi on the street,” Hoke said in February.
Still, other flying taxi operators have acknowledged that it will take time to get to that point, and that there will first be a period when these vehicles are targeted at the wealthy. “A lot of the initial use cases will be first- and business-class passengers transferring to flights,” Michael Cervenka, chief technology officer of U.K. flying taxi company Vertical Aerospace, said earlier this year.
In late July, it became clear that Volocopter's plans for the Paris Olympics were being scaled back, even as the company claimed that its immediate cash problems had been resolved. “It's a technological advance that could be useful,” insisted Transport Minister Patrice Vergriete, acknowledging that the flying taxis might not be able to welcome passengers in time for the Olympics. Volocopter was careful in public not to blame the public backlash for the setback, instead blaming a US supplier for “not [being] was unable to deliver what it had promised,” and its failure to obtain approval from the EU Aviation Safety Authority to operate commercially.
Lazarski doesn’t see the failure of flying taxis as a victory so far. “It’s more of a relief,” she says. But for her, the fight isn’t over. As vice-president of UFCNA, the French trade union against aircraft noise, Lazarski is involved in a legal battle against plans to operate a vertiport on the Seine River for flying taxis that could take off and land from central Paris. That launch pad has already been given government permission to operate until December. The race for the Olympics may be over, but the dream of flying taxis over Paris isn’t dead yet.
