Wisk publishes first white paper which showcases opinions of autonomous eVTOL aircraft services

Wisk has released its first white paper which looked to deter­mine the opin­ions of autonomous eVTOL air taxi ser­vices, with more than 90 per cent of respon­dents say­ing they would like­ly trav­el using this method.

The com­pa­ny — which is cur­rent­ly devel­op­ing its self-fly­ing, all-elec­tric eVTOL air­craft Cora, com­mis­sioned Hypoth­e­sis Group to con­duct the research across the top 30 Des­ig­nat­ed Mar­ket Areas (DMAs) in the USA. This con­sist­ed of one-hour vir­tu­al in-depth inter­views, fol­lowed by a two-hour online focus group.

Ques­tions includ­ed com­mut­ing changes dur­ing and post-pan­dem­ic, top trans­porta­tion pain points, appeal and like­li­hood to use, con­sumer expec­ta­tions and use cas­es.

Addi­tion­al­ly, con­sumers also pro­vid­ed feed­back on what a poten­tial cus­tomer jour­ney would look like, with Wisk con­clud­ing the key fac­tors for con­sid­er­a­tion to ensure suc­cess.

Gary Gysin, CEO of Wisk, said: “We are excit­ed to be at the fore­front of the autonomous air taxi rev­o­lu­tion. The adop­tion of air taxi ser­vices will have pro­found impacts on our mobil­i­ty, our com­mu­ni­ties, and our envi­ron­ment, but under­stand­ing con­sumer sen­ti­ment is crit­i­cal to future plan­ning and ensur­ing the suc­cess of the indus­try.”

In terms of con­sumer expec­ta­tions, the top five for air taxi fea­tures and ben­e­fits includ­ed being safe (68 per cent), clean (57 per­cent), reli­able (57 per­cent), time-sav­ing (56 per­cent) and envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly (54 per­cent). Out­lin­ing per­son­al uses cas­es, the list includ­ed:

Trav­el­ing out of town for work: 68 per cent

Trav­el­ing around town for work: 60 per cent

Com­mut­ing to/from work: 57 per cent

Trav­el­ing out of town to meet friends: 54 per cent

Trav­el­ing around town to meet friends: 45 per cent

Mak­ing per­son­al appoint­ments or oblig­a­tions: 40 per cent

Run­ning per­son­al errands: 36 per cent

Ear­li­er this week, the com­pa­ny also announced it will begin a trans­port tri­al in New Zealand lat­er this year, as part of the gov­ern­men­t’s broad­er Air­space Inte­gra­tion Tri­al Pro­gramme (AITP).

The white paper can be down­loaded here.