Picture this: a well-dressed man enters the elevator of his high-rise condo, but instead of going down, he heads up to the roof. There, he hops inside his autonomous Uber aircraft and whizzes across town to the rooftop of his office building. The charge? $179, give-or-take surge pricing. 

This vision of urban, aerial transport is probably still many years in the future, but I'm optimistic we could start seeing flying car prototypes this year. After all, who could guess that we'd start seeing self-driving cars picking up and dropping off passengers in large American cities in 2016? (Even if it just lasted a week.)

Uber started the year by slashing its fares to the bone in a concerted effort to kill off competitors like Lyft, and ended the year in a quixotic battle with the California DMV over its refusal to obtain a $150 permit for its fleet of self-driving cars. So what's in store for the ride-sharing giant in 2017?