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On-Demand Personal Aviation Takes OffTechnology Briefing |
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TranscriptOn April 20, 2017, a two-seat prototype of the "Lilium Jet," the first zero-emission electric airplane capable of Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL), completed a series of rigorous flight tests in the skies above Germany. It is the only electric aircraft capable of both VTOL and jet-powered flight, using its wings for lift, similar to a conventional airplane. This advanced capability consumes around 90 percent less energy than multi-rotor drone-style aircraft, like the eHang 184. This will enable the five-seat production version of the Lilium Jet to achieve a range of more than 200 miles with a maximum cruising speed of 200 miles/hour. In flight, the Jet's power consumption per mile will be comparable to a five-passenger electric car. Take-off and landing for a Lilium Jet only requires a small open space or a landing pad on a building, alleviating traffic on congested roads. Lilium is a startup created by a team out of the Technical University of Munich. In December 2016, it received 10 million euros in funding from London-based venture capital firm, Atomico. The plan is for a network of inexpensive landing pads, in-and-around congested cities. The business plan uses the mass produced five-seat vehicles to provide a ride-hailing service for people needing to get places where traffic is a problem. The Lilium website gives an example of a Manhattan to JFK taxi trip now involving 55 minutes and costing $56-to-73, depending on traffic. But, using the Lilium service, it will only take five minutes. Initially the cost would be $36, but eventually it should drop to $6. This is a very big deal! Imagine traveling from San Francisco's Marina to work in downtown San Jose-a drive that would normally occupy the better part of two hours-in only 15 minutes. What if you could save nearly four hours round-trip between Sao Paulo's city center and the suburbs in Campinas? Or, imagine reducing a 90-plus minute stop-and-go commute from Gurgaon to an office in central New Delhi to a mere six minutes. More importantly, what if the total cost was even cheaper than today's drive. Every day, millions of hours are wasted on the road, worldwide. Last year, the average San Francisco resident spent 230 hours commuting between work and home-that's half a million hours of productivity lost every single day. In Los Angeles and Sydney, residents spend seven whole working weeks each year commuting, two of which are wasted unproductively stuck in gridlock. In many global megacities, the problem is even more severe: the average commute in Mumbai exceeds a staggering 90 minutes. For all of us, that's less time with family, less time at work growing our economies, more money spent on fuel-and a marked increase in our stress levels. A study in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine, for example, found that those who commute more than 10 miles were at increased risk of elevated blood pressure. If Lilium was the only company working on this problem, this would just be another blip on our technology radar. But, Lilium is not just a "blip." It's part of a growing swarm that is about to engulf and radically transform transportation in the twenty-first century. Since shortly after the invention of the airplane, visionaries have dreamed of flying rather than driving. In the 1920s, Henry Ford commissioned a team at the Ford Motor Company to create a tiny single-seat commuter plane called the "Ford Flivver." In the 1960s, "Saturday morning TV" featured the twenty-first century Jetson family in their own flying car. In the '70s, inventor Paul Moller began experimenting with small VTOL aircraft, which led to prototypes of his Skycar beginning in the 1980s. But, until recently, safe, economically feasible Personal Air Vehicles (PAVs) seemed impossible. Then, in 2015 a few forward-thinking professionals at NASA presented a preliminary plan for making airborne commuting a reality. That plan, highlighted in the November 2015 issue of Trends, was so exciting that Uber immediately embraced it, hired its principal author away from NASA, and launched an initiative called Uber Elevate. Rather than create its own PAV, Uber's role is that of champion and promoter of a broader PAV business eco-system. As such, it sees itself making money by creating one of the first and largest "on-demand aviation services," resembling its on-demand ride service. On-demand aviation has the potential to radically improve urban mobility; giving people back time lost in their daily commutes. And just as sky- scrapers allowed cities to use limited land more efficiently, urban air transportation will use three-dimensional airspace to alleviate transportation congestion on the ground. A network of small, electric VTOL aircraft would enable rapid, reliable transportation between suburbs and cities and, ultimately, within cities. And according to Uber, this vision is achievable with- in the coming decade if the key actors in the VTOL ecosystem, including regulators, vehicle designers, communities, cities, and network operators, collaborate effectively. NASA and the FAA recently spear- headed a series of On-Demand Mobility (ODM) workshops to bring the VTOL ecosystem together to identify barriers to launching an on-demand VTOL service. This includes emerging PAV vehicle manufacturers, federal agencies, private investors, professional societies, universities, and international aviation organizations. They align quite well with the following 11 challenges identified in a landmark whitepaper published by Uber in October 2016:
Over the next eight to ten years, on-demand aviation has the opportunity to burst forth in much the same way automobiles did between 1910 and 1920 or the World Wide Web did in the '90s. The core technologies and the value proposition are in place; we just need to get out of the way and let it happen. Given this trend, we offer the following forecasts for your consideration: First, on-demand aviation will go a long way toward closing the infrastructure gap. As discussed earlier, without a major infrastructure initiative, the United States is expected to suffer a $1.4 trillion infrastructure deficit by 2025. Even the proposed bi-partisan program will not fully close this gap. Fortunately, the development of infrastructure to support an urban VTOL network will likely have significant cost advantages over heavy-infrastructure approaches such as roads, rail, bridges, and tunnels. It has been proposed that the repurposed tops of parking garages, existing helipads, and even unused land surrounding highway interchanges could form the basis of an extensive, distributed network of VTOL hubs ("vertiports") with multiple takeoff and landing pads, as well as charging infrastructure or single-aircraft individual VTOL pads with minimal infrastructure, ("vertistops"). As costs for traditional infrastructure options continue to increase, the lower cost and increased flexibility provided by these new approaches may provide compelling options for cities and states around the world. Second, by the late 2020s, the economics of manufacturing VTOL PAVs will become more akin to automobiles than aircraft. Initially, of course, VTOL PAVs are likely to be quite expensive, but because the ridesharing model amortizes the vehicle cost efficiently over paid trips, that initial high cost should not end up being prohibitive. Once the ridesharing service commences, a positive feed- back loop will ensue that ultimately reduces costs and prices for all users. That is, as the total number of users increases, the utilization of the aircraft increases. Logically, this continues with the pooling of trips to achieve higher load factors, and this lower price will feed back to drive more demand. That will increases the volume of aircraft required, which in turn drives manufacturing costs down. Beyond this learning curve, savings will kick in lowering manufacturing costs even more. Third, simultaneous adoption of self-driving cars will make the transitions to fully automated flight quite manageable. During the start- up phase, on board pilots will be common and "remote control pilots" will be involved on other fights. However, as consumers and regulators become increasingly familiar and comfortable with self-driving cars, this technology will be implemented in PAVs. |
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