User:Marc Lacoste/sandbox/Urban Air Mobility

A ground transport alternative is enabled by unmanned aircraft technologies: Autonomous Systems and electric propulsion. Barriers include aviation safety, airworthiness, operating costs, usability, airspace integration, aircraft noise and emissions, tackled first by small UAS certification then experience.

History

On 1 November 2018, NASA started an Urban Air Mobility Grand Challenge in Seattle. On 2 July 2019, the EASA released its Special Condition SC-VTOL and wants the standards to be agreed on by year-end. It encompasses aircraft with two or more distributed propulsors, up to nine passengers and 3,175 kg (7,000 lb) — like the divide between existing CS-27 small and CS-29 large rotorcraft. A basic category for personal and rural use and an enhanced category for commercial air transport and flight over urban areas, requiring a 10^-9 probability of catastrophic failure like airliners.

Market

Goldman Sachs forecasts a $70 billion annual demand for 50,000 air taxis worldwide by 2035, if the economic, technological and regulatory barriers are overcome. For Airbus, Helicopters are a first step, followed by combustion-electric hybrids and then all-electric aircraft, aiming to capture 3-5% of airport traffic, for a $50 billion market in 2030.

By 2019, City-center transport within 35 km (20 mi) with reserves is achievable, extendable to 150 mi (240 km). Regulators are driving the schedule: with a regulatory framework by the end of 2019, vehicles could be ready by 2025-28 after a 5-7 years aircraft development to begin commercial services. Industrialization and scaling will come next with autonomy, increasing revenues and reducing costs, but regulation drafts does not cover it yet, and it will take another rulemaking cycle of typically seven years, probably to 2030.

Airbus forecasts large-scale production, high utilization and low operating costs in the second half of the 2030s. Before more economical eVTOL configurations, Airbus tests its A³ Voom helicopter airport shuttle in Mexico City, and in São Paulo in 12 min instead of up to 2 h, where it flew over 10,000 people, at a rate of 50 flights a day with a 40-60% utilization. Airbus expects to operate its first vehicles, to understand value flows an to master their reliability and performance before handing them over and training customers.

Because venture capital is abundant and testing a configuration takes only $5-10 million, $50 million to fly, there are 118 companies developing UAM vehicles, mostly startups but also legacy aerospace manufacturers including Bell, Boeing or Embraer. But reaching type certification and industrialization will take up to a billion dollars, leading to failures or mergers and acquisitions, and only 5-6 may survive. Safety have to reach airline levels to be socially acceptable.

MarketsandMarkets projects a market growing from USD 5.3 billion in 2018 to USD 15.2 billion by 2030, mostly in North America, at a CAGR of 11.33%.

By 2050, with a reasonable cost gap with ground transportation, KPMG projects 400 million or more annual enplanements in at least 50 congestion-driven megacities, mostly for high-frequency airport shuttle services.

Safety

Current helicopter accident rates like the Sikorsky S-92 safety-focused design of 1 fatal accident per million flight hours would be insufficient for urban mobility leading to 150 accidents per year for 50,000 eVTOLs flying 3,000 hours a year. On May 16, 1977, the New York Airways accident of a Sikorsky S-61 shuttle from JFK Airport which landed on the roof of the Pan Am Building (now MetLife) when a landing leg collapsed and a detached rotor blade killed several people on the helipad and one woman on Madison Avenue, ended that business for decades almost around the world. Current rotorcraft experience combined with advances in autonomous flight, airspace integration and electric propulsion will benefit vertical flight safety to help Sikorsky Aircraft want to reach one failure per 10 million hours on high-utilization platforms.

Projects

Multiple designs are in development for Urban Air Mobility, not only from startups and some in partnership with Uber, ranging from single-seat recreational vehicles to four-seat air taxis:

• Airbus A³ Vahana: the single-seater was planned to fly by 2017 end to demonstrate autonomy: a 35 kWh (130 MJ) swappable battery feed eight 45 kW (60 hp) electric motors driving variable-pitch propellers on the tilting canard and wing, providing a 50 mi (80 km) range at up to 100 mph (160 km/h);
• Airbus CityAirbus: a four-seat prototype is planned to fly unmanned by the end of 2018 before manned flights in 2019, it has eight fixed-pitch propellers in four ducts and its battery should allow a 60 km (37 mi) range at a 120 km/h (75 mph) cruise;
• Aurora Flight Sciences has flown a 1⁄4 scale unmanned model of its two-seat Uber eVTOL concept with eight separate lift rotors, shut down after transitioning to forward flight powered by the cruise propeller;
• Bell Helicopter develop a modular architecture for electric or hybrid-electric aircraft and partnered with Uber to develop an eVTOL;
• Ehang 184: the unmanned single-seater was unveiled at Las Vegas CES in early 2016, flown since including with a passenger, targeting 100 km/h (62 mph) flights up to 25 min with a 120 kg (265 lb) payload;
• Embraer wants to leverage its commercial-aircraft experience to operate and maintain eVTOLs, provide ATC services and partnered with Uber to develop an eVTOL;
• Kitty Hawk Flyer: supported by Google cofounder Larry Page, an ultralight single-seat recreational eVTOL to be used over fresh water and to be delivered from 2017 end, it should fly 15-20 min initially;
• Lilium Jet: unmanned vertical first flight in April 2017, the five-seat production aircraft should fly in 2019 with an array of electric ducted fans mounted on tilting flaps;
• Joby Aviation, a Silicon Valley startup, switched from its S2 two-seat tilt-prop concept, to the four-seat S4 with four props on the wing and two tilting props on the tail;
• Mooney Aircraft teamed with CarterCopters and Uber to develop a slowed rotor/compound four-seat autogyro with a two-blade unpowered rotor, a 34 ft (10 m) span wing and a tail pusher propeller
• Urban Aeronautics CityHawk: an Israeli four seater based on the Cormorant ducted-rotor unmanned freighter in flight testing, piloted and turbine-powered initially before autonomy and hydrogen fuel;
• Volocopter 2X: the German startup supported by carmaker Daimler AG should test its two-seat multicopter air taxi in the fourth quarter of 2017, its 18 rotors above the cabin should allow it to attain 100 km/h (62 mph) and fly a 160 kg (350 lb) payload over 27 min;
• Workhorse Group, a Truckmaker, designed its 70 mph (110 km/h) SureFly two-seat hybrid-electric and plans to fly a prototype by 2017 end, it has eight rotors in coaxial pairs above the cabin and a 200-hp gasoline generator gives up to 70 mi (110 km) range over 1 hour;
• Zee.Aero, owned by Google cofounder Larry Page, is test-flying a piloted subscale prototype with 12 rotors in pairs for vertical lift and a pusher propeller for forward flight.

See Also

• Flying car (aircraft)
• Personal air vehicle
• List of personal air vehicles

Further Reading

• "Innovation > Urban Air Mobility". Airbus.
• "Initiatives > Urban Air Mobility". European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities. European Commission.
• "Urban Air Mobility". NASA Ames Research Center.
• "The Electric VTOL News". The Vertical Flight Technical Society.

Articles

• Mark Huber (April 25, 2017). "Uber Partnering with Aurora on Urban eVTOL Network". AIN.
• Mark Huber (Dec 2017). "It's a bird, it's a plane, it's…an Uber?". Business Jet Traveler.
• "Air-Taxi Startup Has a Working Prototype and a Fresh $100 Million". Bloomberg. 1 Feb 2018. Joby Aviation hides its craft at a secretive private airfield.
• "Are air taxis on a ride to nowhere?". Flight International. 19 Feb 2018.
• Stephen Trimble (21 Feb 2018). "Electric unmanned rotorcraft make economic case for air taxi role". Flightglobal.
• Mark Huber (February 28, 2018). "There's No Turning Back from an eVTOL Future". AIN.
• Mark Huber (February 28, 2018). "Rolls-Royce Envisions Electric Future". AIN.
• Julie Johnsson and Alan Levin (1 March 2018). "Boeing Is Getting Ready to Sell Flying Taxis". Bloomberg. The largest industrial company in the U.S. expects to have electric passenger drones on the market within a decade.
• Guy Norris and Tony Osborne (Mar 5, 2018). "eVTOL Gains Momentum in Mainstream Rotorcraft World". Aviation Week & Space Technology.
• Stephen Trimble (7 March 2018). "Airbus Helicopters takes twin-track approach to urban air mobility". Flightglobal.
• Mark Huber (March 16, 2018). "Bell Aims for Urban Air Taxi by 2025". AIN.
• Mark Huber (November 6, 2018). "NASA Plans 'Challenges' for Urban Air Vehicles". AIN online.
• Guy Norris (Nov 8, 2018). "NASA Rolls Out Urban Air Mobility 'Grand Challenge' Plan". Aviation Week & Space Technology.
• "Urban Air Mobility – the sky is yours" (Press release). Airbus. 27 November 2018.
• Jon Hemmerdinger (22 May 2019). "Electric aircraft dominate discussion again". Flightglobal.
• Graham Warwick (Aug 2, 2019). "Urban Air Mobility Making Progress As Uber Continues To Push Hard". Aviation Week & Space Technology.
• Murdo Morrison (21 Aug 2019). "Are we on the verge of an urban air mobility revolution?". FlightGlobal.
• "Can urban air mobility win public confidence?". FlightGlobal. 6 Sep 2019.
• "Flying taxis are taking off to whisk people around cities". The Economist. Sep 14, 2019.

Reports

• R. John Hansman, Parker D. Vascik (April 21, 2016). "Operational Aspects of Aircraft-Based On-Demand Mobility" (PDF). Joint University Program for Air Transportation.
• Fast-Forwarding to a Future of On-Demand Urban Air Transportation (PDF). Elevate (Report). Uber. October 27, 2016.
• Michael J. Duffy; et al. (May 2017). "A Study in Reducing the Cost of Vertical Flight with Electric Propulsion" (PDF). The Boeing Company. {{cite news}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help)
• Arthur Brown and Wesley L. Harris (January 2018). "A Vehicle Design and Optimization Model for On-Demand Aviation" (PDF). Massachusetts Institute of Technology.