Steve Rogerson asks if air taxis will become as common as an Uber.

There is a scene in the 1997 film Fifth Element where Bruce Willis, playing a taxi driver, navigates his flying cab at high speed through an in-air traffic jam. Though such an edge-of-the-seat ride will, probably, stay in the realm of science fiction, the possibility of air taxis becoming a regular scene in future smart cities is definitely moving closer.

A big part of this is the work being done with electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) vehicles. In fact, at next year’s Summer Olympics in Paris, passenger eVTOL vehicles will be offering services to the general public, according to an announcement made at June’s Paris Air Show.

These will be run by German aircraft maker Volocopter. In the same month, it announced it had completed a series of air taxi test flights in Saudi Arabia. Also this summer, test flights were carried out in Shanghai by AutoFlight, and there have been other tests around the world.

Even though I have been aware of these tests for a while, somehow it became a reality this week in Munich when I was listening to a presentation by Scott Miller, director of product management for Cinch Connectivity, part of Bel Fuse. Cinch makes connectors for eVTOL aircraft, and a slide had flying taxis as one of the applications. There it was tagged onto a list that included surveillance, agricultural equipment and livestock monitoring. It seemed almost mundane, and therefore just a little bit more real.

“This will be the next thing,” said Scott, “though we think it will take a long time to evolve for general market use because of things such as air traffic control.”

He said though that earlier applications might include their use by first responders, not just in cities but also in battle fields.

“We have helicopters that are capable of doing this, but this is a new level and they will be using an electric powertrain from the start,” he said. “They are available and already flying.”

The Saudi Arabian test was at Neom, a smart city development in the north-west of the kingdom on the Red Sea. Nadhmi Al-Nasr, CEO of the Neom development project, described the test flight as another milestone on the journey towards creating an innovative, sustainable, multimodal transportation system.

The flight test campaign lasted over a week and built on 18 months of collaboration between Neom, the General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA) and Volocopter. The plan is to use them as air taxis and emergency response vehicles as they are quieter, more adaptable and cheaper to operate than helicopters.

AutoFlight’s tests in Shanghai looked a little like showing off as it executed a claimed world first by flying three eVTOL aircraft in formation.

“We aim to complement urban and regional means of transport for all people by building very safe, quiet and affordable air taxis,” said Tian Yu, founder of the Chinese and German company.

The flight involved three of the company’s Prosperity I aircraft and there are plans to modify the prototypes into vehicles that can carry cargo next year in Asia. It admitted a passenger version would only arrive in the “coming years”.

That said, just this week Guangzhou-based Ehang received an airworthiness certificate from China’s Civil Aviation Administration for an autonomous drone that can carry two human passengers.

Even US space agency Nasa is getting involved. Californian company Applied EVTOL Concepts has this month introduced a transporter that uses Nasa-tested thrusters so it can hover like a helicopter and hit a top speed of 250km/hr; I’m not sure even Bruce Willis managed that during the high-speed chase in Fifth Element. The firm though admitted it was looking at urban air mobility but a clue to its target audience can be found in its statement that the aircraft “can accommodate two people, their luggage, plus golf clubs”.

Well, I gave up golf a long time ago, mainly because I was rubbish at it, and somehow I doubt the day will come when I click an app on my phone to take me home and, instead of an Uber, an aircraft turns up. But, in my time, I have done lots of things that were once only found in science fiction. I must watch Fifth Element again.