The latest would-be air taxi of the future has taken to the sky: Lilium’s new vertical-takeoff-and-landing prototype made its first flight on May 4, the Munich-based startup revealed today. Though Lilium says the gleaming five-seat electric can fly 186 miles in an hour, its first flight, like most such tests, was modest. Operated by remote control, it lifted off, hovered a few yards above the ground, and landed. The modest first outing that’s common for any new aircraft type. This followed months of extensive ground testing.

Lilium has been quiet since sowing a subscale, two-seat prototype two years ago, but it has one of the more interesting—and contested—technological approaches in this burgeoning field. The “Lilium Jet” uses 36 electric-powered ducted fans. Inside each, a small rotor ingests air from the front and pushes it out of the rear at higher speeds. They’re not technically jet engines (so the aircraft isn’t a “jet”). The lack of spinning blades improves efficiency, reduces noise, and eliminates the risk of turning passing birds into chop suey.

Though the work of flight testing and certification remains, Lilium aims to build an on-demand air taxi service in just a few years. Lilium

The motors are arranged in two rows of six on either side of the nose—embedded in a forward assembly known as a canard—and two rows of 12 in the rear wing. The aircraft would pitch the fan assemblies vertically for takeoff, then transition them 90 degrees for horizontal flight, with the aerodynamic wing and fuselage providing most of the lift at cruising speed. In this configuration, the aircraft would only need about 10 percent of the maximum thrust of the motors to maintain forward flight, a Lilium spokesperson says. Panoramic windows and gull-wing doors make for a flying experience that bears little resemblance to commercial aviation.

The Lilium does away with the sort of tools that conventional planes use to control their movement, including the vertical stabilizer, ailerons, or elevator. Instead, it relies on a flight-control computer that will angle the motors in different directions. The forward motors handle pitching the nose up and down. Those on the wing manage roll movements. The aircraft rotates on its axis in a hover by varying the speed of rotors, just as consumer quadcopter drones do.

Though the work of flight testing and certification remains—no easy feat—Lilium cofounder and CEO Daniel Wiegand aims to build an on-demand air taxi service in just a few years, with a network of launch and landing pads across a few cities to start, and a larger operational service by 2025. To start, humans will serve as pilots, but the company aims to drop them ASAP. Lilium says its autonomous technology is nearly ready and it’s just waiting for regulators to allow them to go robo. When that will happen is hard to predict and will vary by region, but analysts say Lilium should have three to five years to make sure the tech is as ready as it says.