Uber's Flying Car Dream Exposes Its Driverless Car Dilemma

An illustration showing Uber's vision for a flying car service from the top of a parking garage. Credit: Uber Uber wants to usher in the flying car future depicted in science fiction films such as "Back to the Future" and "Star Wars." The company has published a paper explaining how its ride-hailing service could help launch flying cars as a fairly affordable option for commuters. But Uber's plan for flying cars also exposes the company's more immediate challenges in dealing with self-driving taxi competitors. Uber currently gets away with not having to pay the high costs of owning and maintaining a huge fleet of rental cars or taxis. Instead, Uber has built its ride-hailing empire upon its app service that connects drivers with paying passengers. The company's flying car vision seems like a continuation of its existing business model, given that it specifically rules out the idea of Uber producing its own vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) vehicles. It seems clear that Uber wants to continue playing the ride-hailing middleman without having to pay the steep costs of developing and manufacturing flying car technology. "Rather than manufacture VTOL hardware ourselves, we instead look to collaborate with vehicle developers, regulators, city and national governments, and other community stakeholders, while bringing to the table a very fertile market of excited consumers and a clear vehicle and operations use case," Uber writes in a blog post introducing the white paper. Flying cars present a nice, far-off dream for the ride-hailing company. Uber wants to let other companies such as Zee.Aero, Joby Aviation and A3 Airbus invest their blood, sweat and capital into developing the flying car technologies and manufacturing the vehicles. It sees its ride-hailing service and expertise as a way for those flying car companies to earn back the up-front development costs over time through many rides.