Uber has released a white paper outlining its plans for flying cars by 2021. No, I didn’t mistakenly watch the Jetsons last night instead of the news!

And they’re not really flying cars – more precisely small vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft. Uber have released a whitepaper to introduce their new project to use electric aircraft to transport multiple people up to 160km at speeds reaching 240kph.

Uber Chief Product Officer Jeff Holden says this initiative is about improved urban mobility and giving people back time lost in daily commutes. The whitepaper, Uber Elevate, states: “Every day, millions of hours are wasted on the road worldwide. Last year, the average San Francisco resident spent 230 hours commuting between work and home – that’s half a million hours of productivity lost every single day. In Los Angeles and Sydney, residents spend seven whole working weeks each year commuting, two of which are wasted unproductively stuck in gridlock. In many global megacities, the problem is more severe: the average commute in Mumbai exceeds a staggering 90 minutes."

According to Wired, it’s a matter of bringing largely existing know-how together. “Boeing and Airbus have already introduced lightweight, composite materials and fly-by-wire systems to commercial aviation. Consumer drones have proven sophisticated software can make flying a multi-propeller aircraft as easy as thumbing an iPhone. Computers and electric cars have pushed battery technology forward, and the US Department of Energy is spending tens of millions of dollars to accelerate research”.

And, Uber has hired former NASA engineer Mark Moore to help make the project a reality, Bloomberg reports. Moore used to be an aircraft engineer at NASA's Langley Research Center, and in 2010, he published a white paper about electric aircraft with VTOL capabilities that could replace cars for commuting.

One of the biggest challenges getting this Uber initiative off the ground may not be the technology but the regulatory environment and meeting the requirements of aviation authorities. But if and when it happens, Uber Elevate would certainly add another dimension to the fleet mobility model.