As a company Uber is an acquired taste — people love it or hate it, or sometimes both. But it has certainly proved to be an effective disruptor of the business of urban transportation in cities across the world, damaging or destroying old business models and reducing consumer costs by forcing down wages. That’s why their latest initiative, however whacky it sounds, has to be taken seriously.

Uber Elevate takes the concept of personal mobility to a new level, to be precise several hundred feet above the earth. The aim is to develop vehicles (perhaps best described as very small aircraft) that marry the established technology of vertical take-off and landing with the rapidly advancing technology of a new generation of batteries. The vehicles would be designed to transport individuals over the distance, say, from an out-of-town airport into the city centre. Imagine that in London or New York. The limit to the distance is set by the capacity of the aircraft’s battery, so could in theory be expanded. A journey from JFK to New Haven or from Heathrow to Cambridge would not be impossible.

As Uber make clear in its published material, there are challenges to this concept. Safety and certification are crucial but would be helped by the fact that the “planes” would not have rotor blades — a source of problems for many helicopters.