This drone-looking aircraft is expected to fly paying passengers during the Paris Olympics next summer. German company Volocopter hopes to get all certifications and authorisations in early 2024. Entirely electric; it’s not as noisy as helicopters. But don’t compare the Volocity electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) to helicopters says Volocopter’s CEO Dirk Hoke. "It's totally different (from helicopters). It will be a total new experience for the people and, in a few years, people will just take it as a normal transportation route. And 20 years from now, I think people will talk about this event as the revolution of bringing in the next step of aviation,” he says. Volocopter has partnered with French authorities to make flights available during the world's biggest sporting event. Will hopping on a flying taxi be the new cruise boat of the French capital? No one can tell just yet. What's expected, however, is the construction of a floating vertiport on the Seine River by Austerlitz station in the east of central Paris. In front of this green building, Volocity will be able to serve the capital - the only station located in central Paris, the other ones being pre-built airports or heliports in the suburbs. Volocity has a 200 kg (440 pounds) maximum payload and can fly at up to 110 km per hour (70 miles per hour) up to 25 km (22 miles) away, according to the company's website. It's meant for short and fast trips for a single passenger since the aircraft only has two seats, including one for the pilot. Price-wise, passengers should first expect an expensive flight ticket, between the cost of a taxi airport transfer and a helicopter ride, Volocopter says. "Will it go down to a price that is affordable to everyone on the street? Definitely, because it's just a matter of balance of scale. Once we go into the hundreds, we will easily drop down the price by half," says Hoke. Scaling will be helped by the ease of control of the machine, says Paul Stone, chief test pilot at Volocopter. Volocity pilots will need a conversion course. "Helicopters are quite hard to fly. They have a lot of interactions between controls. You pull one lever and three things happen and you have to compensate. In this aircraft, you make one control movement and one thing happens very predictably. And so it is much more straightforward to fly. So that training step will be a small step for people with that (flying) experience," he says. Volocopter is presenting its Volocity at the Paris Air Show at Bourget Airport. For this edition of the show, all eyes are turned to flying taxi manufacturers. "Having paying passengers on an electric aircraft would be a big advancement for the industry, for industry sustainability, for new business models like air taxi. It's hard to call anything a Wright Brothers moment, but it would be a big deal," says Glenn McDonald, analyst, Aerodynamic Advisory. And the competition is only getting started. Plane manufacturing giant Airbus has a scale model of its CityAirbus NextGen, startup Eve Air Mobility isn't flying it's eVOLT, but is demonstrating VR for visitors to get the feel of it. Overair is showing a scale model of its Butterfly aircraft with very large propellers designed to minimise noise. German company Lilium is taking a slightly different approach to design with the Lilium Jet, whose cabin resembles a private jet. Another big player on the eVOLT scene is Archer, an American company with one of the widest flying taxis. With its 12 rotating propellers, the Archer Midnight can fly up to 160 kilometres (100 miles) and carry four passengers on top of the pilot. For Billy Nolen, former acting administrator of the FAA, and chief safety officer at Archer, the stakes are high. "This is our version of the airspace race. So when you think about, putting a man on the moon, President Kennedy said 'We go to the moon not because it's easy, but because it's hard.' This is a heavy lift for the industry globally. So the ones that can manage to come together execute it, get it done right, it will indeed be our version of a moonshot," he says. Archer says it plans to "deploy" 6,000 aircraft by 2030. That concentration of eVOLTs might be a problem, says McDonald. "It's fine if you have a low number of these aircraft flying around. But as you're getting to Uber-like levels of the number of aircraft, which some of these OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturer) seem to want, that becomes a challenge with airspace management and safety. Also, there are concerns with the business model, how much demand is there for that rapid on-demand air travel within an urban area? Because we're not talking about Uber-like prices here. We're talking several times that at best," he says. While most flying taxis have in-cabin pilots, some are planning to be autonomous. ... The Paris Air Show runs until 25 June. AP video shot by: Tristan Werkmeister/Cassandra Allwood

Cyclists on the Seine River by the French capital are not a common sight. Just outside of Paris, New Zealand-based company Manta 5 is demonstrating its latest water e-bike for the first time. "We have been told by others that this could be an alternative to what we typically see in jet ski-like products," says Louis Wilks, head of marketing, Manta 5. "The key point of difference is that our bike has no emissions, no wake. You don't need a trailer. It's super, super easy to ride. It's all-around better. Yes, maybe you don't go as fast, but you don't need to go fast sounding like an absolute hooligan when you want to enjoy the coastlines and the lakes and rivers and also get a great deal of fitness as well." Equipped with a 2.5 kw electric motor and a Bluetooth ride and throttle controller, the Manta 5 SL3 is the company's second generation of water e-bikes. Depending on the battery configuration and fitness level, riders can expect up to four hours of cycling high above the water. But riding on the Seine doesn't come without a cost. "For the 10,000 euros ($11,000, starting) price tag, it's not dissimilar to that of a high-end e-bike that you would get for the road. However, this bike, it's customisable and you can adjust that for different-sized riders. So you could buy one bike for the whole family from dad to 16-year-old son and daughter," says Wilks. Except that for that price, instead of sharing, most families could get a conventional e-bike each. Manta 5 says it hopes to lower the price as it scales up production. For now, it offers a product that doesn't fit into any category, and it could seduce anyone from watersports fans to nature lovers. The e-bike demonstrations are organised on the sidelines of VivaTech, France's biggest tech fair. Speaking from the event, Jérôme Colombain, a technology journalist, says this type of product could have a future: "Yes, tech can help us to discover, to be more in tune with nature. I've got an electric bike that's hyper-tech, that's connected, that's got GPS. And it's a real pleasure to be out in the open air on a thing like that. I think there really is a marriage to be made between the two. Of course, there's the question of the environmental impact of all that, the use of rare earths, rare metals, etc. There are all these issues." Laurent Florès, an associate professor of marketing at Paris-Panthéon-Assas University, came to try the bike for the first time at the rowing base. With the help of a demonstrator, he got the gist of it within 10 minutes. The SL3, unlike the previous generation, features what Manta 5 calls "Easy Launch Technology". Thanks to that, riders can learn how to launch more quickly, around 40 minutes, instead of three hours, the company claims. "I will describe it as a magic carpet for you to actually be like Aladdin to some extent, to actually get out of your office, put the bike on. And instead of riding roads, you actually ride 'la Seine,'" says Florès. Florès says he'll seriously consider buying one - he already owns an electric foil. "It may be a bit bulky, but as you get probably better, it may not be as bulky because the foils and there may be shorter and I stay as such, it may take probably less weight and more importantly, less room." The SL3 can be de-assembled into five parts to lay it flat. The company website says it "fits in any vehicle with the seats down or in the boot space of larger SUV vehicles". AP video shot by: Tristan Werkmeister

Viktoria Kovalenko chose to come to England not only because it offered her refuge from the war in Ukraine. It was also a chance for her to escape from her harrowing memories of losing her family in a shell attack. Kovalenko, 34, witnessed the death of her husband Petro and 12-year-old daughter Veronika last March when the car they were in was hit by a shell in northern Ukraine. Kovalenko survived, along with her then one-year-old baby, Varvara, but they were soon picked up by Russian soldiers and held captive in a school basement for three weeks. Almost a year on from that ordeal, Kovalenko has found a temporary new home in a quiet English village with the kindness of volunteers, who helped her cross borders and apply for a UK visa. But she hasn’t yet found a way to live with her grief and trauma. ""(I get) some obsessive thoughts, fears or just tiredness from everything I experienced," she said. Like tens of thousands of other Ukrainians who have fled to the UK, Kovalenko is slowly getting used to her new life. Her English is improving day by day. She keeps busy taking care of Varvara, now a 2-year-old who toddles everywhere with no fear and loves British chocolate. She shares her refuge with her brother, his wife and their two young girls, who also escaped unharmed. But Kovalenko still wells up when she speaks about Petro and Veronika or look at their images, which she keeps in photo frames next to her bed. And every day she longs to return to Chernihiv, the city she fled when war broke out last February. On March 5, 2022, the family of four were near a Russian checkpoint near the village Yahidne when a shell exploded, killing Petro and Veronika on the spot. Kovalenko and Varvara hid in an abandoned building nearby, but the next day they were found by Russian soldiers who took them to a gym in the basement of a school in Yahidne. There the mother and child were held by Russian soldiers for 24 days, along with about 300 people including babies as young as two months old and elderly villagers who later died during captivity. "People were sick, coughing; some slept on the floor, some on a chair, and some slept standing up," Kovalenko recalled. "At night, they (people) went to the toilet in a bucket, it was difficult to breathe." When the Russians retreated from the village in early April, Kovalenko got out and later found her way to Lviv, then on to Poland, where she joined her brother and his family. It was in Poland that a volunteer reached out and offered to help find her refuge in the UK. The volunteer was working with Derek Edwards, a Briton who set up an organization called Homes for Ukraine soon after the war started to help transport dozens of Ukrainian refugees to safe housing in England. Kovalenko said she knew next to nothing about the U.K., but decided to go anyway because she thought being on the move would help her process her grief. In December, six months after Edwards first submitted her visa request, Kovalenko finally arrived in Kent. Edwards had picked up Kovalenko and her relatives from Poland, and found her a former vicar's house with the help of church officials. She took in the quiet country lanes, the village green and old brick houses, the everyday luxuries that British people take for granted. But all she could think about was returning to her apartment block in Chernihiv. By year end, the war could be over, she said hopefully. Then, she said, she could restart therapy, find a job and rebuild her life.

Wales' national instrument, the harp, will play a key part in King Charles III's coronation on 6 May. Alis Huws, the royal harpist, will play at Westminster Abbey on the day. Appointed in 2019, she's the sixth royal harpist since 2000, when the role was resumed by then-Prince of Wales Charles. The role had been discontinued during Queen Victoria's reign. "I'm really excited and truly honoured and it's such a privilege to have been asked to play a small part in the upcoming coronation," says Huws. Over the last four years, Huws had the opportunity to play for King Charles on multiple occasions. "We always have really positive interactions all round," she says. "And when I'm on duty, it's always the royal harp that I play, the same one that I'll be playing in Westminster Abbey on the sixth (6 May, coronation day). And he only ever hears me play on that instrument. We always have a nice discussion and I think it's well publicised his love for music. And that's just another reason why I'm so excited that there's these new commissions that we'll be sharing on the 6th of May." Charles already had a harpist play for his investiture ceremony in Wales in 1969. And Huws got to play for him and other royal family members, in 2019, right before her appointment. The harp she's rehearsing with is a Salvi, an Italian manufacturer of high-end harps. Salvi gifted a gold leaf harp to the Prince of Wales in 2006. It's only used by the royal harpist. "It's a truly, truly stunning instrument both to see and to play," says Huws. "It's got all kinds of Welsh emblems on it. We've got some dragons, we've got the Prince of Wales feathers, there's a crown, there's some Welsh love spoons, some daffodils, and the list goes on. It's really ornate and gorgeous, gorgeous to look at and it's all gold and a really, really special instrument. It's a real privilege, always, to get to play it."

Aired on 3 May 2021