Aviation 2020 - Growing Urban Air Mobility in this decade: risks, opportunities and challenges

The future of aviation is ePropulsion and we are experiencing a renaissance and a return to the heydays of Urban Air Mobility and VTOL flight in 1960s USA! Are we ready and what are the key criteria to growing UAM in the decade as we move into the 3rd age or era of aviation, the electric age?

When it comes to aviation, safety is key for all aircraft and infrastructure. Higher levels of automation will not only improve safety but air traffic control and help air traffic controllers manage the airspace for small drones to A380s.

For any connected ecosystems and especially aviation, security is paramount especially when it comes to pilot-less aircraft where there is not backstop in the form of a pilot to manually take command in the event of a hacker trying to take control of the aircraft.

When it comes to electric propulsion cost and range and are the biggest issues. Aviation grade batteries are low energy density and very expensive and while Fuel Cells are better suited to aviation with 10 times the energy density, there are issues around the weight and safety of hydrogen storage. Range is a big issue given that like helicopters, eVTOL will still need at least a 20 minute VFR reserve.

As for use cases, short intra-city hops, unless it’s to avoid bottlenecks crossing rivers and waterways, are inefficient and when you take into account the first and last mile to and from vertiports, will not save much, if any time. The real use case is still airport shuttles, as well as linking business and industrial districts but also connecting low population outlying suburbs, towns and villages to urban transport hubs.

Given the experience after decade of modern EVs, which are still only marginally cheaper on a total cost of ownership basis, and given that the most optimistic forecasts are producing 40000 to 50000 aircraft by 2040, with a dozen eVTOL makers at most dominating the industry, companies will produce volumes in line with high end automakers like Lamborghini and Rolls Royce (around 5000 units each per year).

It is a no-brainer that maintenance of eVTOLs will be simpler and cheaper, but the greater reliance on electronics and the necessary redundancy could close some of the cost gap,

The US already has 5446 vertiports/ Heliports and helipads for VTOL passenger and larger cargo aircraft as well as the ATC systems. The real work is going to be in providing electrical supply for superchargers, battery handling and fire suppression and firefighting equipment and systems to handle battery fires. The big challenge will be building infrastructure and creating a safe managed airspace for small BVLOS drones under 400ft and integrating delivery drones into airport and vertiport airspace for delivering and collecting cargo.

eVTOLs should be much quieter than helicopters, but "visual noise" will always be an issue especially as volumes increase.

Automation in aviation is an ongoing process that started with the first autopilot in 1912 and has progressed up to 95% of flight on a large passenger jet being automated. While Airbus recently demonstrated their Automated Taxiing, Take-off and Landing (ATTOL) system on an A350 in January, they have stated that autonomy is to assist, not replace human pilots. Given that an aircraft in flight cannot be brought to a controlled stop with a simple emergency brake or shutting the power like a car, it makes no sense from a safety perspective to remove a critical redundancy / safety level and the only "system" that can perform a manual landing, the human pilot, especially over populated areas.

Type certification is an onerous and expensive process for existing manned aircraft types and as the Leonardo AW609 tiltrotor certification process has shown, even more so for new aircraft types. Type certification of a fully autonomous aircraft, like the Wisk Cora, will be even tougher.

Lastly all the laws and regulations for VTOL aircraft are in place after 73 years of piloted VTOL passenger aircraft. Autonomous and even just remotely piloted BVLOS aircraft are a whole new ballgame, especially when they will have to share airspace with manned aircraft.

Time for take-off?