The allure of personal air transport—the kind of flying vehicle that can take you anywhere, anytime—got a jolt this week thanks to the efforts of Lilium, a startup that recently completed the first successful flight test of its two-seater electric plane.
Like the maiden voyage of the Wright Flyer, it was a fairly unremarkable test: the prototype craft soared for a few minutes in the skies near Munich, Germany, with no one on board and a pilot controlling it from the ground, according to Wired. But by proving that its technology works, Lilium hopes to generate interest in its ultimate goal: a five-seater plane that can take off and land vertically and be summoned within minutes via an app, much like Uber or Lyft.
The most obvious use for a Lilium plane is relatively short trips within very congested cities. The company uses the journey from the west side of Manhattan to JFK Airport as an example: a regular yellow cab takes just under an hour to complete the 16-mile trip and costs at least $50. Lilium claims its electric jet could get there in five minutes for just $6.
For that to work, of course, the company will have to overcome immense challenges, from perfecting battery technology and building landing sites to convincing regulators to let its planes fly. And it plans to do all that very quickly: Lilium's roadmap calls for the first manned tests of its production craft by 2019 and the start of commercial service in 2025.
The whole thing sounds almost fanciful, and indeed it has been met with skepticism among others working on similar designs, including Embry-Riddle researcher Richard Anderson, who told Wired that "they're definitely exceeding some fundamental math." Others are more optimistic, including Uber's chief product officer Jeff Holden, who predicted last fall that autonomous aircraft could be shuttling people around cities within a decade.