Emerging markets to lead the way into electric flight.
With now more than 200 electric and hybrid-electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) concepts currently in development around the world, public attention has shifted from the feasibility of the eVTOL concept to its future certification, testing, and application in real life. Often referred to as “passenger drones”, eVTOL vehicles are considered “disruptive” as their attractive operating cost, high safety standards, and eco-friendly approach are meant to revolutionize flying. Accordingly, they are of interest to a number of sectors, of which passenger transportation — or aerial mobility — constitutes the most anticipated launch: the one meant to bring private aviation even closer to the end-user.
***Editor’s Note: This guest post is authored by Paul Malicki, CEO of Flapper.
What is Aerial Mobility Anyway?
Remember The Jetsons? Produced first in the early 1960s, the cartoon series envisioned a fairly advanced version of what we would refer to as “the aerial mobility system”. The Jetsons’ semi-autonomous air pad (sitting four, plus a dog) could take off from hundreds of vertiports and loop through specially designed aerial traffic corridors, most likely overseen by the numerous command centers which appeared in the series. If all those terms sound complicated, consider that The Jetsons was set exactly 100 years into the future, which corresponds to the year 2062 — within the lifetime of myself among other millennials.
Rewind back to 2019 and Jetsons-like airborne automobiles and highways have yet to formally launch. Yet, with numerous certifications on the way, we can surely state that flying passenger drones, as we’ve envisioned them, have never been closer to reality.
“Aerial ridesharing”, “aerial urban mobility”, or “on-demand aerial transport” all refer to the next generation of air transportation, which will lay the foundation for faster, more sustainable, and safer travel. Usually considered for urban commutes, aerial mobility might also be important for city-to-city transportation, with larger and more powerful vehicles operating flights with up to 2h in duration.
The enabler that drives the emergence of aerial mobility is eVTOL technology, which promises to solve the following key issues presented by alternative modes of transport:
Operating Costs
In the near-term, electric passenger drones are meant to bring down the Operating Cost per Seat-Mile to less than US$2. Long-term prospects point to a potential reduction to a level of $0.44 per seat, according to Uber Air. Hydrogen-powered systems are even more promising. Boston-based Alakai estimates the Operating Cost per Seat-Mile to be between $0.14 for a fully-autonomous system and $0.29 for piloted aircraft. That compares to the average of $0.5-0.6 for car ownership and $0.5-$2 for ridesharing trips.
Infrastructure Costs
The redundant air space constitutes the most affordable venue for the construction of future air corridors. According to Airbus, aerial urban mobility is cheaper to build than highways, train networks, metro, and hyperloops — the last one considered the most challenging from a cost perspective.
Safety
To succeed, eVTOL operations will have to be much safer than both helicopters and cars are today. According to one research paper (PDF), the level of safety of passenger drones will be 2x higher than that of helicopters. Additional rotors, new-generation engines, advanced command center control, and pre-established air corridors are all likely to add an extra layer of safety to eVTOL operations.
Noise
As one ex-NASA employee I once interviewed said, “The problem with eVTOL is not the level of the noise per se, it’s the type of noise it creates”. Projected to be 4x quieter than helicopters, passenger drones will generate a mosquito-esque noise, which some might find disturbing. Capitalizing on their experience in noise reduction, companies such as Airbus, Embraer, or Bell are likely to gradually switch to drones with lower rotor tip speed and extra rotors for quieter air mobility.
The eVTOL-powered flights are hence central to the very concept of aerial mobility. Yet, it’s the complexity of the entire ecosystem, including air space design, vertiport infrastructure, charging infrastructure, and traffic control that makes the future implementation of passenger drones more challenging.
A simplified version of an eVTOL ecosystem in São Paulo looks as follows. In it, the drones take off from airport-like helicities, equipped with high-speed charging stations. The passenger service is realized in specially adapted vertiports. The dedicated traffic control towers overlook both helicopter — and eVTOL traffic — the latter initially allowed exclusively at predefined routes only. An early-stage route built upon the Tiete River constitutes one such possibility.
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