‘Flying Cars’: is the sky the limit?
Or do more ‘earthly matters’ like real estate and the logistics of personal transit determine their success? What can aerial vehicle developers learn from NASA’s modular approach to space travel? What goes up, needs to come down… and disperse.
Aerial vehicles of the eVTOL kind (vertical takeoff & landing electrically propelled) are hot. The big question is whether city councils and regulatory authorities will facilitate this exciting, new transit mode. They might where eVTOLs pose the least risk and hindrance, typically over a low-density built area. Reality is that there’s where eVTOLs are not that relevant. Highly populated urban sprawl with a congested road infrastructure, where they do matter, they will not help to substantially reduce traffic, yet noise levels and safety/traffic control issues will be scrutinized even more. Maybe the eVTOL stands a better chance if it adapts itself to what’s already in situ.
When I attended the 5th Transformative Flight conference in San Francisco in 2019, hosted by the American Helicopter Society (renamed Vertical Flight Society) and NASA Ames Research, there were two guest speakers who warned the attendees not to dismiss the obvious in the quest for what is considered THE next big thing in personal mobility: aerial vehicles. The first was an U.S. Air Force colonel who quoted former WW2 allied forces supreme commander and of course U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower, that battles are won or lost because of logistics. I happened to be the other. My logistical concerns formed the basis for my presentation “Seamless 2D &3D transit”.
Lately, it seems like high-tech thinking and tinkering has completely taken over from common sense. At first glance not that surprising since pinnacle technology always tends to challenge vested frames of mind, and perhaps not that disturbing if it weren’t for the huge sums of money involved. Best example is that tens of billions of dollars have been spent on developing autonomous vehicles. Fortune magazine in fact, predicted a cascading, negative effect when the ‘wishful AV engineering’ doesn’t pan out according to what we were told to believe. Full autonomy for road vehicles may well take decades, many robotics experts say.
Does overconfidence in technology seep into UAM thinking?
Same with Urban Air Mobility (UAM). The focus is that much concentrated on the engineering of eVTOLs, that the logistical aspects of air mobility are pretty much being overlooked. Simply said, the transit of people and goods, whether it is road-based or through the air, not only should bring us to contemplate which transport mode suits best, but it has also implications how to accommodate and link inbound and outgoing traffic. What drives off, needs to arrive; what goes up (3D), will eventually land (2D). Now, the denser the built environment, the bigger the traffic problems are on the ground, the higher the potential demand for air taxis — that’s the easy part of the story.
However, we tend to forget that the more populated the area is, the more expensive the real estate is to facilitate these in- and outgoing movements. Fact is that you will need a lot of these so-called vertiports strategically spaced away from each other, to have a service of any significance. The SF-flavored artist impressions of dedicated vertiports used in several pitches (Uber’s a.o.) actually rule out the possibility of affordable, ubiquitously available ride-hailing through the air. My suggestion is to make those hubs as space-efficient as possible, and preferably integrate them with other economic functions, instead of building them all-new.
Above a picture of what I have in mind. Shopping malls are usually located at strategic places, meant to cater to a precisely defined area. Many of them feature large flat roof surfaces. Those can be used to park cars and to install solar panels (to recharge the EVs and eVTOLs). They may well be subject to a complete overhaul altogether. Nearly every shopping center is destined to decline at some point. There’s a reason why the term ‘dead mall’ became widespread. Since zero-emission, therefore electric propulsion is the thing to aim for, weight is of paramount importance. This immediately excludes the two-in-one contraptions like the ones Terrafugia has been working on for over a decade. You always carry the weight of the other component with you. But you might say that there is a fundamental flaw in Uber’s business model too. The arrival and departure of road and air taxis, incl. boarding and unboarding of passengers, requires a lot of space.
NASA: different stages, different modules
Instead of swapping EVs and eVTOLs, better use a passenger compartment which is lowered onto a chassis for driving around and airlifted when you want to fly to your destination. Like the shipping or intermodal container which can be hoisted onto a sea ship, barge, train or truck, a passenger cabin can be made to reach its destination by road or through the air. A rare opportunity to provide seamless, intermodal transit — something which is not feasible between other passenger transportation modalities (train, bus or passenger plane). Logistically, ‘2D and 3D’ transit is a much tighter concept, albeit more complex to engineer. Airbus already presented such a system — proof that there is (considerable) room for improvement.
There are other advantages/benefits to a modular surface/air mobility system. Passengers remain seated. Safety authorities may well object to people crisscrossing parking and landing decks (which is the case with separate road and air vehicles). The road module (car) is always at your disposal, in case you own it. You are not dependent on a ride-hail provider or a vertiport having car parking. Then again, ‘modular’ lends itself for operating by a provider (TNC) perfectly. While the road module is driving you around (autonomously), the air frame’s batteries can either be recharged or the aerial module can perform freight hauling duties (also autonomously). Best of all perhaps, air mobility forms a great excuse to come up with a road module that tackles the issues carmakers haven’t yet properly: energy- and space efficiency, zero emissions, self-driving.
Concluding, it is safe to say that logistics and real estate determine bottom-line economics of any urban air mobility system to a very large extent. Having them work together will most definitely form the difference between profitability and yet another losing ride-hail proposition.
PS: Food for Thought
Irony too. Because we fail to use surface infrastructure and transport more efficiently, we squeeze ourselves into cramped cabins to airlift us to our destination. Another underestimated logistical aspect: no matter how many vertiports (a large number will never be likely), there will always be a door-to-door element to aerial transit that needs implementing by ground transportation, a surface vehicle. Unless of course you have your own vertiport at home and one on your office rooftop.
Ralph Panhuyzen was managing director of Amsterdam Westpoint, a major multimodal (shipping, trucking, rail) hub for warehousing, distribution and freight forwarding, located in the Netherlands. He is the author of books on auto-mobility and the Port of Rotterdam, and the auctor intellectualis of new-iSetta.com — a leaner, greener, all-in approach to personal mobility, for which he received recognition at NAIAS (Detroit Auto Show). Panhuyzen resides in the Netherlands. He can be reached at @NextGenEV
