Air Taxi – Future of Transportation
On June 19, 2018 in Cologne Germany, NexAvian attended the Future of Transportation World Conference and was fortunate to meet so many great leaders in the industry of urban air mobility, or as many refer to as air taxi. With so many insightful presentations, it was a great opportunity to gather information and discuss the challenges that face the future of urban air mobility.
This conference brought together the key players diligently working on all aspects of personal air transport and although there were 9 different streams of presentations, NexAvian’s focus and interest remained with Stream 1: Urban Air Mobility where Tony Robinson, the CEO of UKi Media and creator of this event, quicks off conference with his opening speech with
“Our cities are likely to be populated by the airborne autonomous low-speed aircraft (air taxi) sooner than generally realized”
Moderating the remainder of day 1 on this stream was Mike Hirschberg from Vertical Flight Society (VFS) who elaborated on the revolution of electric VTOL in the past few years. With much excitement about the changes in technology and recent developments from manufacturers, there is certainly many new vehicle design concepts entering the market. The exhaustive list of companies designing and manufacturing these vehicles today can be found on the VFS website, which has proven to be the most reliable resource for much of the eVTOL / air taxi community.
The arrival of urban air mobility brings a complex network of service solutions. Airbus’ value chain presentation on from Andreas Thellmann was quite eye opening for us in terms of the overall view of the technical and economic landscape of the industry. His outlook on the different value blocks really helped business owners better understand the potential challenges that lie ahead in the urban air mobility ecosystem.
Several OEM’s such as Volocopter, eHang, Bell, Airbus, and Boeing contributed valuable presentations on their new vehicle concepts, but more importantly discussed how this entire air taxi transportation network must work together in order to make it a reality. This includes not only vehicle manufacturers but government regulators, flight operators, urban city policy makers, technology and product suppliers, air traffic controllers, ground infrastructure providers, and customer interface designers. Over and over again, presenters talked about integrated frameworks that will sustain on-demand urban mobility community.
Among all the frameworks, it seems that airspace integration will be one of the most challenging barriers to overcome. With the addition of personal air vehicles, drones, and on-demand air taxis, the air traffic density will not be manageable with our current ATM systems. Moreover, the added complexity of weather and atmospheric conditions will affect flight plans, ground infrastructure locations, and the overall operations of the new skies. Companies such Aurora Flight Sciences (Boeing) and A^3 Altiscope (Airbus) are providing much of the research in this topic and are key players in the development of ATM systems that will eventually make air taxi services manageable.
With so many new insights from these great leaders it is apparent that our urban air mobility and air taxi community has its challenges. But there’s no doubt that with the drive and motivation of these innovators, that airborne autonomous low-speed aircraft will soon be flying overhead of our cities.