Uber plans flying taxi service within 2020

Uber wants to launch a system of flying cars to move people around cities, with a goal of putting demonstration projects in place by 2020. "I hate that term (flying car), but we'll have to live with it," the company's chief product officer, Jeff Holden, said at the Uber Elevate Summit in Dallas. The vision was published in a 99-page white paper last year.

The ride-sharing giant announced a series of partnerships to manufacture “vertical takeoff and landing” (VTOL) vehicles and put networks in place, a system dubbed Uber Elevate.

“The goal of these partnerships is to develop a new on-demand VTOL network to enable customers in the future to push a button and get a high-speed flight in and around cities,” Uber said in a statement.

Uber has deals with five companies working on aircraft development — Aurora Flight Sciences, Pipistrel, Bell Helicopter, Embraer and Mooney. Aurora said it conducted the first test flight of a VTOL prototype last week. 
Eventually, the company, which is also developing self-driving cars, thinks it can get the cost for a trip in an Uber flying taxi down to an ambitious $1.32 per passenger mile, with the overall goal of making it “economically irrational” to drive a car on the ground, Holden said Tuesday, adding that “Urban aviation is a natural next step for Uber in this pursuit, which is why we are working to make push a button, get a flight a reality". 

Uber’s goal is to have the first demonstration network in place in Dubai for the 2020 World Expo in that city, and another pilot in Dallas the same year ahead of “full-scale operations” in the Texas region by 2023.

People are still coming to terms with the idea of self-driving cars, according to a survey last year by the University of Michigan, which found only 10 percent of people have no concerns about riding in fully autonomous cars.